WSJ.com - The State Against Blacks

WSJ.com - Opinion: The State Against Blacks

'The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do. . . . And that is to destroy the black family.'

 

 

WSJ.com - The Great Misallocators

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Great Misallocators

 

Step back for a minute from the day to day policy fights and consider how an economy can grow faster. One way is to get people to work harder or longer. The government can contribute here with policies that reward work and investment, such as lower taxes.

A second route to faster growth is innovation, which means inventions or new processes that increase productivity.

The third way is through the more efficient use of capital, both human and monetary. These resources are scarce in any economy, and growth will be fastest if they are allowed to find their highest return. If resources are allocated to less productive uses or create asset bubbles due to bad policy, then overall growth will be slower than it should be.

Government "investments"—Mr. Obama's favorite word last night—are by definition made for political purposes, rather than for their highest potential return. They are allocated by politics rather than by prices.

The path back to faster growth, more jobs and a more competitive U.S. economy does not travel through more political mediation. Nor does it lie in endlessly easy Fed policy in a misguided attempt to refloat the housing bubble or revive the financial boom. A better economy requires policies that reward work and innovation, while letting capital flow to the companies and individuals with the best ideas.

 

 

WSJ.com - BYU Is Now the Duke of the West

I rarely send out sports related emails, but I had to give props to my team.

 

WSJ.com - BYU Is Now the Duke of the West

 

It's a prestigious school that propels its graduates to desirable jobs. Wherever the team travels, especially in its conference, the opposing fans make it exceedingly clear that they would like to see them mashed into a pulpy sauce. And its team colors are blue and white.

In other words, BYU has become the Duke of the West.

 

WSJ.com - What Congress Should Cut

WSJ.com - Opinion: What Congress Should Cut

 

The primary economic challenge today is that our government spends too much money it doesn't have, and it is involved in too many things it cannot do well and shouldn't do at all. This burden is manifested by a $1.3 trillion annual def icit and a $14 trillion national debt. The more pernicious effects of this fiscal drag are unseen: a debased dollar, massive (and hidden) unfunded liabilities, and a crushing burden on would-be job creators.

Milton Friedman correctly argued in 1999 that the "real cost of government—the total tax burden—equals what government spends plus the cost to the public of complying with government mandates and regulations and of calculating, paying, and taking measures to avoid taxes." He added, "Anything that reduces that real cost—lower government spending, elimination of costly regulations on individuals or businesses, simplification of explicit taxes—is a tax reform."

Repealing ObamaCare is another obvious source of reduced spending. The absurd claim that this government takeover of health care produces budget savings is based on budget gimmickry—such as assumed Medicare cuts that, according to estimates by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, would put 15% of our hospitals out of business, and thus will never happen. The claim also ignores the historically explosive growth in other similar programs. Medicare grew nine-fold larger than was projected during its first 25 years. In its first 10 years alone, the program experienced a 700% cost overrun.

Entitlements—56% of the annual budget and growing—are the most difficult but also the most important programs to reform, because the total unfunded liability tops $100 trillion for Social Security and Medicare alone. The federal government does not put these liab ilities on the books, but serious budgeting requires that we deal with this ominous long-term burden now.

None of this will be easy. Many will likely demagogue any reduction in the rate of growth of spending as a devastating "cut." But the politics of spending has changed, and there is an expectation among fiscally conservative voters—Republicans, independents, tea partiers and even Democrats—that the government tighten its belt, just as American families have been forced to do.

 

 

 

 

WSJ.com - The Congressional Accountability Act

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Congressional Accountability Act

A proposal to ban regulation without representation.

 

One of the most important political stories of 2011 will be regulation, as the backwash of the outgoing Congress hits the federal agencies and the White House drives its agenda via rule-making rather than democratic consent. Republicans are vowing to thwart these maneuvers, but the coming hostilities might also provide an opening to reform the modern administrative state.

The basic problem is that Congress delegates far too much power to regulators, passing ambiguous laws that convert the agencies into quasi-legislative bodies that aren't politically accountable. Even if President Obama is exploiting this trend like never before, it is hardly new, nor unique to either party. Most politicians support the status quo because, being politicians, they can take credit for popular goals and then blame the bureaucracy for the costs and problems they create.

Yet the Constitution vested Congress with the duty to make laws, not to make vague suggestions about what it might be good for the law to be. And now there is a growing movement to force Members to take responsibility for the laws they pass, and to force Administrations to be accountable for the laws they create through regulation.

 

 

 

 

WSJ.com - Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

I’m not quite ready to adopt all the “Chinese Mother” parenting techniques, but I think there are valuable lessons that western parents, myself included, could learn.

 

WSJ.com - Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

 

Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting," and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents "were not doing their job." Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.

 

 

 

WSJ.com - Congress Rediscovers the Constitution

WSJ.com - Opinion: Congress Rediscovers the Constitution

 

If the new Congress to be sworn in on Wednesday is the tea party's cardinal achievement so far, its most symbolic achievement will come on Thursday, when the first order of business in the House will be a reading, aloud, of the Constitution. That event alone will not bring us any closer to limited government. But it will help get a debate going that for too long has been dormant.

In 1794, for example, James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, rose on the House floor to object to a bill appropriating $15,000 for the relief of French refugees... He could not, he said, "undertake to lay [his] finger on that article of the Federal Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." The bill failed.

Throughout the 19th century, members of Congress and presidents alike rejected legislation because they believed there was no constitutional authority to enact it. The bedrock presumption of our polity, they understood, was individual liberty. The Constitution gave the federal government the authority to pursue certain limited ends, like national security and ensuring free interstate commerce, but otherwise left us free to pursue our ends either through the states or as private individuals. It did not authorize the federal government to provide us with the vast array of goods and services that today reduce so many of us to government dependents.

Thus the first question the new Congress should ask of any proposed law is: Does the Constitution authorize us to pursue this end? If not, that ends the matter. If yes, the second question is: Are the means we employ "necessary and proper," as constrained by the principles of federalism and the rights retained by the people that are implied by a government of enumerated powers? In essence, the Constitution is no more complicated than that. It was written to be understood by ordinary citizens.

How, then, did modern constitutional law get so complicated and federal power so expansive? One reason is that several provisions in the Constitution were written broadly to allow for contingencies. But those provisions were never meant to open the floodgates to boundless congressional power. The presumption was that any political redress of unexpected problems would be done with due deference to the larger structure, aims and principles of the document. This brings us to the main reason Congress leapt its constitutional bounds: a fundamental shift in the climate of ideas.

Early 20th-century Progressives, inspired by European social democracies, rejected the Constitution's plan for limited government, advocating social engineering schemes instead. Rule by government experts was the order of the day.

The Supreme Court was wrong in allowing Congress to exercise power not granted it by the Constitution, and courts today are wrong when they uphold those precedents…

 

 

 

 

 

WSJ.com - The Mistaken Attack on Outsourcing

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Mistaken Attack on Outsourcing

 

Since his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama has repeatedly said that the global operations of U.S. companies harm the country because they drain the American economy of jobs. His rhetoric about "tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas" has populist resonance at a time of economic uncertainty, but it is also at odds with the available evidence about how globalizing firms affect the American economy. Moreover, it harms the popular understanding of our opportunities and challenges.

When American firms grow abroad, they also grow domestically…

The data do not support the crude, fixed-pie intuition that firms either invest abroad or at home. Ten percent growth in American firms' foreign investment is associated with 3% growth in their domestic investment. And when firms grow abroad, their domestic exports and R&D activities grow especially, contrary to Mr. Obama's rhetoric.

Vilifying or penalizing American businesses for their global operations will only lead them to consider leaving the U.S.—or consider being bought by foreign companies. Such moves would hurt America by removing valuable headquarter jobs. Instead, Mr. Obama should emphasize how Americans succeed when our firms succeed world-wide. That formulation better captures reality and offers a more sensible way to engage businesses in a new spirit of cooperation.

 

 

 

 

 

WSJ.com - Tea Partiers and the Spirit of Giving

WSJ.com - Opinion: Tea Partiers and the Spirit of Giving

It is common to hear that the popular uprising against the growth of the welfare state, with rising taxes and deficits, is based on a lack of caring toward those who are suffering the most in the current crisis.

Few would disagree that free enterprise is grounded in one's self-interest. But self-interest is not the same thing as selfishness in the sense of unbounded consumption or disregard for the less fortunate. In fact, the millions of Americans who advocate for private entrepreneurship and limited government—whether they are rich or poor—may be stingy when it comes to giving away other people's money through state redistribution, but they are surprisingly generous when it comes to giving away their own money privately.

Americans in general are very charitable, by international standards. Study after study shows that we privately give multiples of what our Social Democratic friends in Europe donate, per capita. But not all Americans are equally generous. One characteristic of givers is especially important in the current debate: the opinion that the government should not redistribute income to achieve greater economic equality.

Contrary to the liberal stereotype of the hard-hearted right-winger, opposition to income-leveling is not evidence that one does not care about others. Quite the contrary. The millions of Americans who believe in limited government give disproportionately to others. This is in addition to—not instead of—their defense of our free-enterprise system, which gives the most people the most opportunities to earn their own success.

WSJ.com - Not Really 'Made in China'

WSJ.com - Not Really 'Made in China'

The iPhone's Complex Supply Chain Highlights Problems With Trade Statistics

 

"What we call 'Made in China' is indeed assembled in China, but what makes up the commercial value of the product comes from the numerous countries," Pascal Lamy, the director-general of the World Trade Organization. "The concept of country of origin for manufactured goods has gradually become obsolete."

Mr. Lamy said if trade statistics were adjusted to reflect the actual value contributed to a product by different countries, the size of the U.S. trade deficit with China—$226.88 billion, according to U.S. figures—would be cut in half.

The value-added approach, in fact, shows that sales of the iPhone are adding to the U.S. economy—rather than subtracting from it, as the traditional approach would imply.

Based on U.S. sales of 11.3 million iPhones in 2009, the researchers estimate Chinese iPhone exports at $2.02 billion. After deducting $121.5 million in Chinese imports for parts produced by U.S. firms such as chip maker Broadcom Corp., they arrive at the figure of the $1.9 billion Chinese trade surplus—and U.S. trade deficit—in iPhones.

If China was credited with producing only its portion of the value of an iPhone, its exports to the U.S. for the same amount of iPhones would be a U.S. trade surplus of $48.1 million, after accounting for the parts U.S. firms contribute.

 

 

 

Al Gore's Ethanol Epiphany - WSJ.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572404575634753486416076.html#mod=djempersonal

 

Anyone who opposes ethanol subsidies, as these columns have for decades, comes to appreciate the wisdom of St. Jude. But now that a modern-day patron saint—St. Al of Green—has come out against the fuel made from corn and your tax dollars, maybe this isn't such a lost cause.

Welcome to the college of converts, Mr. Vice President. "It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Al Gore told a gathering of clean energy financiers in Greece this week. The benefits of ethanol are "trivial," he added, but "It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

At least on corn subsidies, we now have the makings of a left-right anti-boondoggle coalition. Major corn energy subsidies such as the 54-cent-per-gallon blenders credit expire at the end of the year, and Republican Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn are encouraging the new Congress to prove its fiscal bona fides by letting them die.

 

 

 

 

 

This Lame Duck Session Should Be the Last - WSJ.com

Betsy McCaughey: This Lame Duck Session Should Be the Last - WSJ.com

Americans ought to make this lame duck session of Congress the last in history. Members who lose re-election have no moral authority to continue governing: They were fired by the voters, who should demand that they clean out their desks and go home.

 

On Nov. 2, the voters replaced the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives with at least 61 new Republican members who campaigned on lower spending and less government power. Allowing members who were not re-elected to legislate national policy or set the 2011 federal budget is like allowing a fired employee to run the office another two months, or letting your ex-spouse continue managing your checkbook.

 

Lame duck sessions were unavoidable before jet planes. The framers of the U.S. Constitution provided 17 weeks for newly elected members to travel to the capital and take their seats on March 3. That was the 18th century.

 

In 1933, Americans ratified the 20th Amendment to eliminate lame duck sessions. It set Jan. 3 as the day newly elected members would take their seats. That still left seven weeks after the election, but no one imagined that the old Congress would return to the capital during that time.

 

For a half-century, the 20th amendment worked. Except during World War II and the Korean War, Congress did not reconvene after November elections. But for the last two decades, lawmakers have hurried back to the capital after Election Day to deal with spending bills and controversial legislation they deliberately had avoided before the election.

 

The unrepresentative lame duck Congress should do as little as possible.

How Medicare Killed the Family Doctor - WSJ.com

Richard Hannon: How Medicare Killed the Family Doctor - WSJ.com

Remember Marcus Welby, M.D.? He defined the family doctor on TV in the 1970s, exemplifying the four Cs: caring, competent, confidant and counselor. In the mid-'60s, I remember my father-in-law, a real-life Dr. Welby, telling me the exciting news that the federal government was going to start paying him to see seniors—patients who before he had seen for the proverbial chicken (or nothing at all). That fabulous deal was Medicare.

Medicare introduced a whole new dynamic in the delivery of health care. Gone were the days when physicians were paid based on the value of their services. With payment coming directly from Medicare and the federal government, patients who used to pay the bill themselves no longer cared about the cost of services.

Eventually, that disconnect (and subsequent program expansions) resulted in significant strain on the federal budget. In 1966, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that by 1990 the Medicare budget would quadruple to $12 billion from $3 billion. In fact, by 1990 it was $107 billion.

To fix the cost problem, Medicare in 1992 began using the "resource based relative value system" (RBRVS), a way of evaluating doctors based on factors such as education, effort and specialized training. But the system didn't consider factors such as outcomes, quality of service, severity or demand.

Today most insurance companies use the Medicare RBRVS because it is perceived as objective. As a result of RBRVS, specialists—especially those who perform a lot of procedures—do extremely well. Primary-care doctors do not.

The primary-care doctor has become a piece-rate worker focused on the volume of patients seen every day. As Medicare and insurers focused on trimming the costs of the most common procedures, the income and job satisfaction of primary-care doctors eroded. So these doctors left, sold or changed their practices.

So who really killed primary care? The idea that a centrally planned system with the right formulas and lots of data could replace the art of practicing medicine; that the human dynamics of market demand and the patient-physician relationship could be ignored. Politicians and mathematicians in ivory towers have placed primary care last in line for respect, resources and prestige—and we all paid an enormous price.

A Vote Against Dems, Not for the GOP - WSJ.com

Even though I’d personally love it if the majority of Americans were on board with a true limited government philosophy, I recognize that many of tomorrow’s GOP voters are not, but are instead reacting to over-reach by the liberals who misread their 2008 electoral success.  I worry the GOP may make a similar mistake and over-reach on conservative policy issues not related to spending reductions, which could hurt the GOP in 2 years.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703708404575586063725870380.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

 

Democrats face massive losses in tomorrow's midterm election. Based upon our generic ballot polling and an analysis of individual races, we project that Nancy Pelosi's party will likely lose 55 or more seats in the House, putting the GOP firmly in the majority. Republicans will also win at least 25 of the 37 Senate elections. While the most likely outcome is that Republicans end up with 48 or 49 Senate seats…

 

But none of this means that Republicans are winning. The reality is that voters in 2010 are doing the same thing they did in 2006 and 2008: They are voting against the party in power.

 

More precisely, it is a rejection of a bipartisan political elite that's lost touch with the people they are supposed to serve. Based on our polling, 51% now see Democrats as the party of big government and nearly as many see Republicans as the party of big business. That leaves no party left to represent the American people.

 

Voters today want hope and change every bit as much as in 2008. But most have come to recognize that if we have to rely on politicians for the change, there is no hope. At the same time, Americans instinctively understand that if we can unleash the collective wisdom and entrepreneurial spirit of the American people, there are no limits to what we can accomplish.

 

In this environment, it would be wise for all Republicans to remember that their team didn't win, the other team lost. Heading into 2012, voters will remain ready to vote against the party in power unless they are given a reason not to do so.

 

Elected politicians also should leave their ideological baggage behind because voters don't want to be governed from the left, the right, or even the center. They want someone in Washington who understands that the American people want to govern themselves.

 

 

 

 

Private Social Security Accounts Are Still a Good Idea - WSJ.com

In addition to the math explained in this article, Social Security is a Ponzi (pyramid) scheme that collapses when the bottom doesn't grow fast enough.  It really is that simple.

Shipman and Ferrara: Private Social Security Accounts Are Still a Good Idea - WSJ.com

Suppose a senior citizen who retired at the end of 2009, at age 66, had been able to set up a personal account when he entered the work force in 1965, at the age of 21. Suppose that, paying into his personal account what he and his employer would have paid into Social Security... ...their account, having earned a 6.75% return annually from 1965 to 2009, would still pay them about 75% more than Social Security would have.

It is a mathematical fact that the least expensive way to provide for an almost certain future liability is to save and invest in capital markets prior to the onset of the liability. That's why state and local pension funds, corporate pension plans, federal employee retirement plans and Chile's successful Social Security personal accounts (since copied by other countries) do so. It is sound practice.

And it's why Mr. Obama is wrong to assert that personal Social Security accounts are "ill-conceived," and why each of us should have the liberty to opt into one.

Licensing to Kill - WSJ.com

Review & Outlook: Licensing to Kill - WSJ.com

When most people think of occupations requiring fingerprints and police reports, corner bookshop owners don't spring to mind. Try telling that to Los Angeles, where many used booksellers are required by law to get a police permit and take a thumbprint from every 40-something trying to offload his collection of French poetry.

That's one scene from a study to be released this week by the Institute for Justice, which has collected dozens of examples of regulations choking economic growth by taxing and over-licensing small businesses. In a survey of eight major cities, the study found that entrepreneurs routinely face obstacles of bureaucracy and red tape that deter them from otherwise promising opportunities.

In addition to the economic cost of such inanity, the regulations take a personal toll on many aspiring small business owners, often immigrants who thought America was still a land of opportunity. Consider the case of Muhammed Nasir Khan, who lost most of his family's savings thanks to Milwaukee's messy regulations and the whim of a local alderman.

Despite following all the rules, his food license was retracted at the request of Alderman Robert Bauman, who suggested he would rather see a place "with a little class" in the location, instead of Mr. Khan's restaurant. Reopening Judy's Red Hots, he argued, would somehow encourage crime and disorder and stall the redevelopment of the community. The real crime is how easily an entrepreneur's dream was destroyed by the caprice of a politician and the regulations that empower him.

Politicians of all stripes like to celebrate "small business" while running for office, but the reality is that they often strangle entrepreneurs once they get in power. Read the Institute for Justice study and you'll better understand why the business of America is no longer business. It's bureaucracy.

Why Liberals Don't Get the Tea Party Movement - WSJ.com

Peter Berkowitz: Why Liberals Don't Get the Tea Party Movement - WSJ.com

Highly educated people say the darndest things, these days particularly about the tea party movement. University educations and advanced degrees notwithstanding, they lack a basic understanding of the contours of American constitutional government.

Born in response to President Obama's self-declared desire to fundamentally change America, the tea party movement has made its central goals abundantly clear. Activists and the sizeable swath of voters who sympathize with them want to reduce the massively ballooning national debt, cut runaway federal spending, keep taxes in check, reinvigorate the economy, and block the expansion of the state into citizens' lives.

In other words, the tea party movement is inspired above all by a commitment to limited government. And that does distinguish it from the competition.

But far from reflecting a recurring pathology in our politics or the losing side in the debate over the Constitution, the devotion to limited government lies at the heart of the American experiment in liberal democracy. The Federalists who won ratification of the Constitution—most notably Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay—shared with their Anti-Federalist opponents the view that centralized power presented a formidable and abiding threat to the individual liberty that it was government's primary task to secure. They differed over how to deal with the threat.

Whether members have read much or little of The Federalist, the tea party movement's focus on keeping government within bounds and answerable to the people reflects the devotion to limited government embodied in the Constitution. One reason this is poorly understood among our best educated citizens is that American politics is poorly taught at the universities that credentialed them. Indeed, even as the tea party calls for the return to constitutional basics, our universities neglect The Federalist and its classic exposition of constitutional principles.

Neither professors of political science nor of history have made a priority of instructing students in the founding principles of American constitutional government. Nor have they taught about the contest between the progressive vision and the conservative vision that has characterized American politics since Woodrow Wilson (then a political scientist at Princeton) helped launch the progressive movement in the late 19th century by arguing that the Constitution had become obsolete and hindered democratic reform.

Those who doubt that the failings of higher education in America have political consequences need only reflect on the quality of progressive commentary on the tea party movement. Our universities have produced two generations of highly educated people who seem unable to recognize the spirited defense of fundamental American principles, even when it takes place for more than a year and a half right in front of their noses.

If Schools Were Like 'American Idol' . . . - WSJ.com

Rupert Murdoch: If Schools Were Like 'American Idol' . . . - WSJ.com

There is, however, another hidebound American institution that is also finding it difficult to respond to new challenges: our big-city schools.

Today, for example, the United States is home to more than 2,000 dysfunctional high schools. They represent less than 15% of American high schools yet account for about half of our dropouts. When you break this down, you find that these institutions produce 81% of all Native American dropouts, 73% of all African-American dropouts, and 66% of all Hispanic dropouts.

At our grade schools, two-thirds of all eighth-graders score below proficient in math and reading. The average African-American or Latino 9-year-old is three grades behind in these subjects. Behind the grim statistics is the real story: lost opportunities, crushed dreams, and shattered lives. In plain English, we trap the children who need an education most in failure factories.

Clearly it's not for any lack of money. Over the past three decades, we've nearly doubled spending on K-12 education in real terms. So President Obama was absolutely right to declare the other day that "we can't spend our way out of this problem." Which begs the question: How can we spend so much with so little to show for it?

The answer is that while the system is failing our children, it works very well for some adults. These adults include the leaders of the teachers unions. They include the politicians whom the unions reward with their cash and political support. They include the vast education bureaucracies. In business terms, we have a system that rewards the providers and punishes the customers.

We all know that good schools begin with good teachers. We also know there are many heroic teachers. Unfortunately, our system is set up to protect bad teachers rather than reward good teachers.

In the existing system, we have incentives for almost everything unrelated to performance (seniority, tenure, etc.) and zero incentive for adapting new technologies that could help learning inside and outside the classroom. On top of it all, we have chancellors, superintendents and principals who can't hire and fire based on performance.

How to Raise Boys That Read (As Much as Girls Do): Not With Gross-Out Books and Video Game Bribes - WSJ.com

How to Raise Boys That Read (As Much as Girls Do): Not With Gross-Out Books and Video Game Bribes - WSJ.com

According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, for example, substantially more boys than girls score below the proficiency level on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls. The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents.

The appearance of the boy-girl literacy gap happens to coincide with the proliferation of video games and other electronic forms of entertainment over the last decade or two. Boys spend far more time "plugged in" than girls do. Could the reading gap have more to do with competition for boys' attention than with their supposed inability to focus on anything other than outhouse humor?

Dr. Robert Weis, a psychology professor at Denison University, confirmed this suspicion in a randomized controlled trial of the effect of video games on academic ability. Boys with video games at home, he found, spend more time playing them than reading, and their academic performance suffers substantially. Hard to believe, isn't it, but Science has spoken.

The secret to raising boys who read, I submit, is pretty simple—keep electronic media, especially video games and recreational Internet, under control (that is to say, almost completely absent). Then fill your shelves with good books.

Most importantly, a boy raised on great literature is more likely to grow up to think, to speak, and to write like a civilized man. Whom would you prefer to have shaped the boyhood imagination of your daughter's husband—Raymond Bean or Robert Louis Stevenson?

An Even More Inconvenient Truth - WSJ.com

William McGurn: An Even More Inconvenient Truth - WSJ.com

The man who produced both the Barack Obama short for the 2008 Democratic Convention and Al Gore's Academy Award-winning documentary about global warming offers an inconvenient truth of his own.

His new film, "Waiting for 'Superman,'" is his own attempt to right that balance with a focus on those he calls "other people's children." At the Washington, D.C., premiere last Wednesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan called it "a Rosa Parks moment." New York Magazine suggests it might be "the Inconvenient Truth of education, an eye-opening, debate-defining, socially catalytic cultural artifact."

For years, of course, conservatives have documented the failures that Mr. Guggenheim highlights, and in some cases have even succeeded in pushing through some good reforms. Yet that's just what gives "Waiting for 'Superman'" its potency—the indictment issues from an unrepentant liberal instead of the Heritage Foundation. I suggest to him that the kind of truths about public education he illustrates will be far more inconvenient for those in his circle than say, the friends of a former Bush speechwriter.

The way Mr. Guggenheim says it, you can tell two things. First, he really means it. Second, that until people do get on the side of reform, they will find him, well . . . inconvenient.

Why It's Time for the Tea Party - WSJ.com

The populist movement is more a critique of the GOP than a wing of it.

So far, the tea party is not a wing of the GOP but a critique of it. This was demonstrated in spectacular fashion when GOP operatives dismissed tea party-backed Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. The Republican establishment is "the reason we even have the Tea Party movement," shot back columnist and tea party enthusiast Andrea Tantaros in the New York Daily News. It was the Bush administration that "ran up deficits" and gave us "open borders" and "Medicare Part D and busted budgets."

Everyone has an explanation for the tea party that is actually not an explanation but a description. They're "angry." They're "antiestablishment," "populist," "anti-elite." All to varying degrees true. But as a network television executive said this week, "They should be fed up. Our institutions have failed."

I see two central reasons for the tea party's rise. The first is the yardstick, and the second is the clock. [follow the link to read more]

Tax Contradictions - WSJ.com

Review & Outlook: Tax Contradictions - WSJ.com

 

After 20 months and more than $1 trillion down the Keynesian drain, President Obama is discovering the virtue of tax cuts.

Yesterday the President proposed a $180 billion plan that includes a permanent research and development tax credit and a tax write-off for all business capital purchases in 2011. These are both sensible ideas that would counteract at least some of the damage from Mr. Obama's looming tax increase. John McCain could sue for plagiarism because versions of both ideas were part of his 2008 campaign platform.

The White House will deny it, but it's important to understand what a conceptual switcheroo this is. Mr. Obama's economic policies to date have been based on the belief that government can drive growth by handing out checks to consumers, who will then spend the money and increase what economists call aggregate demand. Missing was any attempt to spur incentives for business or individuals to invest and take more risks. Even if this policy reversal is motivated by election desperation, it is still a tacit admission of the failure of its growth model.

The big flaw in this proposal is that it's temporary. If the tax cut is for only one year, businesses will move spending forward that would have happened in future years. The economy will grow faster in 2011, other things being equal, but some of that growth will be stolen from 2012 and 2013. We've seen this temporary effect before with the home-buying tax credit, cash for clunkers and tax rebates.

In the Keynesian world-view, this is no problem because the one-year policy is supposed to kick-start the recovery and the stimulus can be safely withdrawn because the economy will become self-sustaining. But in the real world, investment will be greater and growth will be faster with a permanent reduction in the tax penalty on capital that will permanently increase the value of that capital. The White House still has some tax learning to do.

We'll nonetheless give the President and his economic team points for intellectual progress. Their proposals for corporate tax cuts are a de facto recognition that the 35% U.S. corporate tax rate is too high.  Now that Mr. Obama has conceded that tax cuts are good policy, Republicans should see him—and raise.

 

 

 

Gates and Buffett Take the Pledge - WSJ.com

 

Kimberly Dennis: Gates and Buffett Take the Pledge - WSJ.com

 

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett announced this month that 40 of America's richest people have agreed to sign a "Giving Pledge" to donate at least half of their wealth to charity. With a collective net worth said to total $230 billion, that promise translates to at least $115 billion.

It's an impressive number. Yet some—including Messrs. Gates and Buffett—say it isn't enough. Perhaps it's actually too much: the wealthy may help humanity more as businessmen and women than as philanthropists.

What are the chances, after all, that the two forces behind the Giving Pledge will contribute anywhere near as much to the betterment of society through their charity as they have through their business pursuits? In building Microsoft, Bill Gates changed the way the world creates and shares knowledge. Warren Buffett's investments have birthed and grown innumerable profitable enterprises, making capital markets work more efficiently and enriching many in the process.

Other signers of the pledge, like Oracle's Larry Ellison and eBay's Pierre Omidyar, have similarly transformed the way people all over the world exchange information and products. They have democratized the transmission of ideas and goods, creating opportunities for people who never would have had them otherwise.

Successful entrepreneurs-turned-philanthropists typically say they feel a responsibility to "give back" to society. But "giving back" implies they have taken something. What, exactly, have they taken? They haven't taken from society, but rather enriched us in ways that were previously unimaginable.

 

 

 

On Gay Marriage, Leave It to the Voters - WSJ.com

I disagree with Mr. Yoo on the policy goal, but he is correct in describing how we should resolve the issue.

 

John Yoo: On Gay Marriage, Leave It to the Voters - WSJ.com

 

In deciding Perry v. Schwarzenegger last week, Judge Walker struck down California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, as a violation of the rights of gays to equal treatment under the law. Judge Walker did more than distort settled precedent and sweep aside centuries of practice. He short-circuited the Constitution's democratic process for the resolution of moral disagreements.

A single judge, he elevated himself above the collective wisdom of millions of California voters and the considered judgment of state and federal officials.

The Constitution does not set up the federal courts as a roving commission of do-gooders to correct all of the nation's problems. The courts, populated by a small number of older lawyers deliberately isolated from the people and inexpert in any field, are likely to cause more social diseases than they cure.

This distortion of the judicial role and rending of the political fabric are wholly unnecessary. The Constitution creates a far better approach to decide contentious moral issues: federalism. Under our decentralized system of government, states offer different combinations of taxes, spending and rights. Citizens can vote with their feet and live in the states that satisfy their preferences.

We trust federalism on other fundamental questions, like life and death. Gay marriage should be treated no different than capital punishment, euthanasia and the basic questions of education, welfare and the family. During the Constitution's ratification, Alexander Hamilton assured New Yorkers that the Constitution would never permit the federal government to "alter or abrogate" a state's "civil and criminal institutions [or] penetrate the recesses of domestic life, and control, in all respects, the private conduct of individuals."

Federalism will produce the political durability that supporters of gay marriage want. If states steadily approve, a political consensus will form that will be difficult to undo.

Consider, by contrast, abortion. Roe v. Wade (1973) only intensified political conflict at a time when the nation was already moving in a pro-choice direction. The decision tied the fate of abortion to the whim of the courts. It poisoned our politics, introduced rounds of legislative defiance and judicial intervention, and undermined the neutral principles of constitutional law.

 

 

 

Washington vs. Paul Ryan - WSJ.com

 

Washington vs. Paul Ryan - WSJ.com

 

Mr. Ryan wants to remodel Medicare by giving seniors a modified voucher to buy private insurance. Mr. Orszag, et al., concede that the roadmap would make the entitlement permanently solvent, as confirmed in an analysis by their icon the Congressional Budget Office, but they claim that the amount of the voucher would not keep pace with rising health-care costs.

This is an odd complaint for an economist like Mr. Orszag, given that more market discipline and consumer choice in health care would drive down costs as it does in all other dynamic sectors of the economy. To take one example, recent research shows that a one percentage point increase in seniors insured by Medicare Advantage HMOs—the Ryan-like program that offers private options—reduces traditional fee-for-service Medicare spending by 0.9%, despite its price controls.

In other words, cost-conscious competition changes how doctors and hospitals provide care to all patients. A larger transition to market-based medicine could turn out to be as smooth as the private-sector shift to 401(k)s from defined-benefit pensions, and a similar reform was even suggested in 1999 by Bill Clinton's Medicare commission, which was led by Louisiana Democrat John Breaux.

This model is a threat to the ideology of those like Mr. Krugman who believe that government can and should decide how all patients are treated. But technocratic central planning won't reform the system, as its sad 45-year history in Medicare shows, and nothing is more likely to finish off Medicare "as we know it" than to continue the current trajectory as it swallows the federal fisc and crowds out all other priorities.

In that sense, Mr. Ryan is really presenting Washington with a philosophical choice between the status quo of an ever-larger and ever-more indebted government and a plan to pay for the promises we've made while still preserving free markets and economic growth. The firehose of invective pointed at Mr. Ryan is in part an attempt to scare voters and in part an effort to prevent voters from understanding that there is in fact a choice.