Market Correction

Quoting Thomas Sowell: "Freedom...is, above all, the right of ordinary people to find elbow room for themselves and a refuge from the rampaging presumptions of their 'betters.'"

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8 January 2008

Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281

To the Editor:

Surely I'm not alone in being horrified by the soaring narcissism and arrogance that Hillary Clinton revealed yesterday during her tearful moment in New Hampshire ("Tears Have Turned Campaigns," January 8). She confessed that she could not maintain her brutal campaign pace if she "didn't just passionately believe it was the right thing to do." The Senator continued: "I have so many ideas for this country, and I just don't want to see us fall backwards as a nation. This is very personal for me."

No one person is as important to a free country as Ms. Clinton fancies herself to be. More fundamentally, her burning "personal" desire to subject all Americans to her "many ideas" is evidence of a frightening itch to be a social engineer. Anyone itching as badly as Ms. Clinton claims to itch to rule over others should never be trusted with power.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

7 January 2008

Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281

To the Editor:

So Lou Dobbs might run for President ("CNN's Lou Dobbs for President? He Says No, Sort of," January 7). May the ghost of Adam Smith help us!

You report one of Mr. Dobbs's trademark roars: "The middle class in this country, the majority in the country, has been ignored. Our elites in Washington, D.C., both political and corporate, are hell bent on ignoring the majority." Perhaps this claim is true, but if so the inference Mr. Dobbs draws - that the American middle-class is in trouble - is emphatically mistaken. I quote my colleague Walter Williams: "Controlling for inflation, in 1967, 8 percent of households had an annual income of $75,000 and up; in 2003, more than 26 percent did. In 1967, 17 percent of households had a $50,000 to $75,000 income; in 2003, it was 18 percent. In 1967, 22 percent of households were in the $35,000 to $50,000 income group; by 2003, it had fallen to 15 percent. During the same period, the $15,000 to $35,000 category fell from 31 percent to 25 percent, and the under $15,000 category fell from 21 percent to 16 percent. The only reasonable conclusion from this evidence is that if the m
iddle class is disappearing, it's doing so by swelling the ranks of the upper classes."*

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

* http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2007/12/05/income_mobility

7 January 2008

News Editor, Boston Globe

Dear Editor:

Charlie Lord writes that "environmentalists are always hard-hitting and effective" (Letters, January 7). Indeed. But hard-hitting and effective at what? As John Tierney explained recently in the New York Times, the environmental movement overflows with "availability entrepreneurs."* Tierney describes these people as "activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels." For example, everyone now knows that Arctic sea ice is shrinking - and infers, with much help from these "entrepreneurs," that the cause is global warming. But how many people know that Antarctic sea ice is expanding to record levels?

The world could do with fewer "hard-hitting and effective" - and cunning - scaremongers.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University

* http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/science/01tier.html?n=Top%2fNews%2fScience%2fColumns%2fFindings

6 January 2008

The Editor, The Economist
25 St James's Street
London SW1A 1HG
United Kingdom

SIR:

It's no surprise that "Contrary to popular wisdom, China's rapid growth is not hugely dependent on exports" ("An old Chinese myth," January 5). Just as no individual prospers by giving the fruits of his labor to others in exchange only for pieces of paper that he never spends, no group of people - including the Chinese - prospers by such a foolish strategy.

Exports are costs. They promote economic growth only if, in return, the exporters receive goods, services, and assets that improve their living standards and their capacity to produce. Any country that insists on exporting its produce and importing in return as little as possible is on a certain path to poverty.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University

5 January 2008

Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281

To the Editor:

Laurie Williamson rightly notes that a political candidate's juvenile use of illegal drugs is irrelevant (Letters, January 5). But the reason isn't so much that the use occurred long ago as it is that such activity simply isn't as awful as these same "mature" candidates - almost all of whom want to continue the "war on drugs" - now proclaim it to be.

Suppose that Bill Clinton or Barack Obama confessed to juvenile "experimentation" with rape or check forgery. Would we dismiss this behavior as mere youthful indiscretion? Of course not. The fact that most people wisely overlook drug use in ways that they would never overlook rape, forgery, and other crimes that victimize innocent persons suggests that it is a cruel mistake to threaten drug users today with imprisonment.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University

4 January 2008

The Editor, New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036

To the Editor:

In "Dealing With the Dragon" (January 4) Paul Krugman again insists that trade with low-wage countries - especially China - threatens to depress wages in America. So I again refer Mr. Krugman (the shrill pundit) to Dr. Krugman (the skilled scholar of trade).

In his excellent 1996 essay "Ricardo's Difficult Idea,"* Dr. Krugman pointed out that wages are determined by worker productivity. Therefore, low wages reflect low productivity. This fact, once grasped, reveals that low-wage countries have no general competitive advantage over high-wage countries. Dr. Krugman continued: "Someone like [James] Goldsmith [a protectionist] looks at Vietnam and asks, 'what would happen if people who work for such low wages manage to achieve Western productivity?' The economist's answer is, 'if they achieve Western productivity, they will be paid Western wages' - as has in fact happened in Japan."

Substitute "Mr. Krugman" for "Goldsmith," and "China" for "Vietnam," and Dr. Krugman's learning should calm Mr. Krugman's fears.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University

* http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm

3 January 2008

News Editor, WTOP Radio

Dear Editor:

I'm appalled by everyone who called in today expressing hopes that one day one of their children "might become President of the United States."

My son, Thomas, is ten. I hope that he graduates from college and has a satisfying and lucrative career. But I'd much rather that he be even a janitor or a used-car salesman than become a politician. To succeed at politics - especially at the national level - requires duplicity and shamelessness rivaled only by arrogance. For my son to become President he would have to abandon nearly every moral precept that my wife and I try hard now to impart to him: honesty, forthrightness, decency, respect for others, and modesty. We emphatically do not want our son to yearn for power, for to do so would inevitably corrupt his humanity.

Thomas, like nearly everyone else in this world, is fit to rule himself. He is not, and never will be - again like everyone else - fit to rule others, even if those others elect him to do so.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University