From the yearly archives:

2007

Guest Workers and The Ultimate Liberal Aim

December 29, 2007

Thanks to Kerry, there has been a great deal of stimulating cross-blog discussion of the desirability of an expanded American guest worker program compared to other policies. As far as I can tell, a good number of smart, well-intentioned folks see a big guest worker program as a second-best substitute for an increase in permanent [...]

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I Dated a Guest Worker

December 27, 2007

Kerry’s spate of recent writing on immigration is making me think differently.
First, prior to reading her interview with Laura Agustin, I had not occurred to me to think of a Mexican gardner as an “expat” or that relatively poor people might also be interested in traveling across borders out of curiosity or a sense of [...]

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Kerry Has a Blog

December 25, 2007

Having heard that in 2008 online journaling is going to be the next big thing, early adopter extraordinaire Kerry Howley has launched her very own “weblog”. Check it out guys! If you have your own “blog” add her to your “blogroll”! Or subscribe to her “feed.”
I know this is what I wanted for Christmas. Have [...]

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Guests in the Machine

December 20, 2007

If you have yet to read Kerry’s Reason cover on guest-worker programs, you’re falling behind. It is simply the best thing anyone has lately done on guest-worker programs, beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned. This part is phenomenal:
As Americans struggle with the implications of immigrants who come to live but not to stay, their single [...]

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Bloggingheads TV with John Nye

December 4, 2007

John Nye and I talk about his book War, Wine & Taxes: The Political Economy of Anglo-French Trade, 1689-1900, historical inequality, and chess cheaters.

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The Great Depression

December 3, 2007

My review essay on The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder, by Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield from the December issue of Reason is available online.

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Actual Evidence about Immigrant Assimilation

December 3, 2007

At VoxEu Esther Duflo outlines a new study on assimilation of Muslim immigrants in Britain by LSE’s Alan Manning and Sanchari Roy:
Manning and Roy rightly conclude that, on the basis of available evidence, Huntington’s pessimism – that Muslim immigrants will prove “indigestible” to non-Muslim societies, seems unjustified indeed. If anything, the constant reminders of “native” [...]

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Designer Anchors

December 3, 2007

Brad Pitt is leading an initiative to build a bunch of houses designed by fancy architecture firms in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. That’s nice. But why not build these houses elsewhere, perhaps a place less likely to flood, a place with jobs?
Responding to critics who question the wisdom of rebuilding at all [...]

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Americans Happy, but Think Country’s on Wrong Course

November 24, 2007

This new AP-Yahoo! News poll shows that while 66 percent of Americans say they are happy, 77 percent think the country is heading in the wrong direction. This is, in a nutshell, why Sachs-Stevenson lost the Economist happiness debate. Right now, many Americans are unhappy with their position in the political and economic cycles. But [...]

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Debate Pics

November 14, 2007

Here are a few pics from this weekend’s Economist debate.

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Technical Difficulties

November 14, 2007

Are over!

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Throwdown in Midtown

November 11, 2007

We won! From my vantage on the stage, I’d say the crowd swung from 30/70 against Tyler and me at the beginning to about 55/45 in our favor at the end. Sachs basically spent the entire time complaining that the United States does not have the politics of the readership The Nation, which I think [...]

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Debate Prep Bleg

November 7, 2007

I’m busy prepping for Saturday’s happiness debate in New York. I haven’t been fastidiously following the happiness literature since I published my Cato paper. So if there is some interesting new work I ought to be aware of, please let me know. Also, if you are aware of anything Sachs has done touching on happiness [...]

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Ron Paul

November 6, 2007

I gave $50 to the Ron Paul campaign yesterday, and I’m delighted he made such a huge haul. I’ve been critical of what I see as Paul’s nationalism,  since I think this is incompatible with a concern for liberty. But, on balance, I cannot help but think that Paul’s presence in the race as a [...]

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Trudie vs Prudie Advice-Off!

November 5, 2007

If you’ll be in DC on November 15th, come to Cato to catch Tyler Cowen talk about Discover Your Inner Economist with comments from Emily Yoffe, author of Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column. Here’s the setup:
In Discover Your Inner Economist, the economist and blogger Tyler Cowen provides quirky and insightful advice for life based on his [...]

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James Flynn on IQ

November 5, 2007

I found James “Flynn Effect” Flynn’s essay in this month’s Cato Unbound really fascinating. I especially liked this part:
The first implication of the new perspective is the benefit of persisting in cognitive exercise throughout life. There is the dramatic case of Richard Wetherill. He played chess in retirement and could think eight moves ahead. In [...]

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What We Do at Cato

October 31, 2007

Once again, The Onion has the scoop…

Political Scientists Discover New Form Of Government
October 30, 2007 | Issue 43•44
WASHINGTON, DC—Political scientists at the Cato Institute announced Monday that they have inadvertently synthesized a previously theoretical form of government known as [...]

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Pluralism and Political Entailments

October 30, 2007

In the newish Public Reason blog, Robert Talisse writes:
I’ve been working on Berlin-style value pluralism lately. I’m particularly concerned with the attempt (made by Galston and Crowder, among others) to derive liberal political commitments from value pluralism. My sense is that value pluralism has no entailments regarding politics. But that’s a topic for another day.
Nope. [...]

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Bloggingheads with Bob

October 25, 2007

Don’t miss my appearance with Mr. Bloggingheads himself, Robert Wright. We talk about ugly Philadelphians, why I don’t like Ron Paul, Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, and positional competition, and the Kissinger-like man-musk of Greenspan.

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Is the Welfare State Justified? by Daniel Shapiro, Comments from Jason Furman

October 22, 2007

Are you in or around D.C.? Well, you’re invited!
POLICY FORUM
Monday, October 29, 2007
12:00 PM (Luncheon to Follow)
Featuring Daniel Shapiro, Associate Professor of Philosophy, West Virginia University, with comments by Jason Furman, Senior Fellow and Director of the Hamilton Project, Brookings Institute and Will Wilkinson, Policy Analyst and Managing Editor of Cato Unbound, Cato Institute.
In his [...]

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Marketplace Commentary

October 22, 2007

I was on Marketplace Morning Edition this morning, providing a commentary on America’s dismal attitude toward trade.
If you’re reading this, you know my blog is not in fact theflybottle.com. And I really need to get my Cato picture updated.
This was my first shot at this sort of thing. Please tell me what you think…

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What Up Herb?

October 21, 2007

I talk with intellectual historian Mark Francis about his book Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life at Bloggingheads TV. Enjoy

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Pre-Tax Inequality and Distributive Versus Allocative Justice

October 18, 2007

Thanks to Tyler for linking the pre-tax inequality post below. Not unusually, Tyler’s comments are cryptic but suggestive:
This is all well worth knowing, and it does help counter the view that growing inequality of income is a poliical [sic] conspiracy. But oddly both the critics and the defenders here are missing one major inequality-related difference [...]

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The Economist Debates

October 16, 2007

As Tyler announced last week, The Economist newspaper is importing its series of debates, already a big success in London, to these United States, and in the inaugural U.S. event, Tyler and I will be debating on the negative  side of the proposition “That America is failing at the pursuit of happiness” against economist-to-the-stars Jeffrey [...]

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Yglesias Doesn’t Care about the Causes of Inequality Because He Doesn’t Care about Inequality

October 12, 2007

I’ve posted a reply to Yglesia’s inequality post over at Cato@Liberty. Also, FYI, this very smart Free Exchange post on exactly the same thing is by my sage colleague, not me.

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