Political Views

An unholy alliance exists between the left and the right over the perceived blight of outsourcing. It either has the stench of 'what about the children?' emotionalism or 'these colours don't run' nationalistic fever. But what about the objective analysis? An interesting article is offered by Bertrand (2011, What goes around, comes around: Effects of offshore outsourcing on the export performance of firms, Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 42, pp334-344). Here's the abstract: ...

Napier and Jost (2008, Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals?, Psychological Science, Vol 19, pp 565-572) write:

"In this research, we drew on system-justification theory and the notion that conservative ideology serves a palliative function to explain why conservatives are happier than liberals. Specifically, in three studies using nationally representative data from the United States and nine additional countries, we found that right-wing (vs. left-wing) orientation ...

24 hours in the day. 1440 minutes. 86,400 seconds. As a nipper that was a jolly long time. With time to burn one’s main fear was indeed boredom. But how does that change as you grow older and contemplate balding, divorce and a motorcycling midlife crisis. A static understanding would suggest a simple substitution effect. Sleep dusting is a time-intensive product that yields zero return. One should therefore achieve a reservation amount, a minimum that allows one to maintain one’s physical efficiency. ...

The US has a relatively poor record in terms of child fatal injury rates (e.g. UNICEF 1991-1995 data has the US child fatality at 14.1 per 100,000. Sweden was down at 5.2). It would seem to be a tad of a stretch, but could the US's abortion restrictions offer one explanatory variable? Consider, for example, Sen et al. (2012, The relationship between state abortion-restrictions and homicide deaths among children under 5 years of age: A longitudinal study, Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 75, pp. ...

One recommends the offering by Tilman (2001, Ideology and Utopia in the Social Philosophy of the Libertarian Economists, London: Greenwood Press). Here's some background info via Toruño's (2002, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 36 Issue 1, pp 211-213) book review:

"The Libertarians, Tilman argues, are driven by a vision of society that is so unrealistic that it can only be defined as utopian, while at the same time providing such elaborate rationalizations for the distribution ...

We here many an ignorant comment about socialism. The simplest is the irrational "government is socialism". The most amusing is "Obama is socialism". But what is socialism? I'd suggest the focus by many of my middle class comrades has been too much on equity. Socialism is condemned to "helping the kids cos we're nice and can forgo the Maldives trip, just for once, don't you know". Nah to all that bobbins! Socialism is ultimately about economic efficiency. It is the ...

The debate over Britain's membership of the European club has unfortunately been sidetracked by the rancid right. An assorted bunch of UKIP and flag waving bints have ensured that there is too much "Little Englander" foot-stamping. This has had the unfortunate knock-on effect of sidestepping the logic of the Europhobe position. Nevertheless, we should not be too concerned about this blight blip. The Europhile population ranges from snotty-nosed snivelling student blubbering away ...

A global super-rich elite had at least $21 trillion (£13tn) hidden in secret tax havens by the end of 2010, according to a major study. The figure is equivalent to the size of the US and Japanese economies combined. The Price of Offshore Revisited was written by James Henry, former chief economist at the consultancy McKinsey, and commissioned by the Tax Justice Network. He said $21tn is a conservative figure and the true scale could be $32tn
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18944097 ...