Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Iraq might turn into a second Somalia within a year if the situation is allowed to keep descending the way it’s doing now. The Islamic Sharia courts are ruling now in Somalia while in Iraq they function undercover and it’s still in our hands to stop them from extending their influence and from becoming the rule instead of the exception they are today.
This post has become a WSJ editorial.
If you want to understand the real enduring strength of America as a nation, look at the Dow Jones industrial average. Not the record 12,000 level reached this month � that may last no longer than a day or a week. Look instead at the 30 companies that make up the Dow index. Only two of the original 30 companies in the index in 1930 � General Electric and General Motors � are still there today. Most of today�s Dow components � the Microsofts and Intels � weren�t even around 50 years ago.
If you look at the relevant stock market indices for Germany, France or even Britain, you will find them dominated by companies that have been around for generations. America by contrast, has mastered the art of creative destruction. This vast competitive openness, combined with entrepreneurial spirit, keeps the country constantly innovating and regenerating.
Gerard Baker, Iraq is just a comma, not a death sentence
These are moments when everything becomes clear, when every action constitutes a commitment, when every choice has its price, when nothing is neutral anymore. It is the time of morality, that is, a time when language becomes clear and it is possible to throw it back in the realists’ face.
A&L links to a review by Michael McDonald of the Jacqueline Lévi-Valensi edition of Camus at "Combat": Writing, 1944-1947
Camus was against “political realism”, calling it “a degrading thing.” “Those whom we called leaders”, he wrote, “invented names for this abdication of responsibility. They called it ‘nonintervention’ one day and ‘political realism’ the next. Compared with such imperious language, what could a poor little word like honor count for.”
The bracing vision of Camus often gives solace. McDonald explains why.
Update: If you feel the need to read some Garry Wills to reinforce your feelings of superiority to Bush, then A&L has rounded that up, too. I assume, however, that this blog is not obliged to give equal time.
I received the following today:
The Lumen Christi Institute presents a symposium at the University of Chicago on Benedict XVI on “Faith, Reason and the University”: The Regensburg Address in Context, with remarks by Hans Joas, University of Chicago, Michael Kremer, University of Chicago, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Northwestern University, Paul Griffiths, University of Illinois, Chicago. Wed., Nov. 1, 2006, 4:00-6:00 PM, Room 101, Hinds Lab. for Geophysical Sciences, 5734 South Ellis Avenue. For more information and the revised text of the Pope’s address (with footnotes), see the notice at www.lumenchristi.org.
We have had some discussion of this speech and its meaning and impact on the blog. If you are able to get to Hyde Park for this symposium, I am sure that it will be good, as all Lumen Christi events always are.
Incidentally, I think the best thing I have seen about the speech was this piece by Lee Harris.
Lewis, William, The Power of Productivity: Wealth, Poverty, and the Threat to Global Stability
[cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings]
Preliminary headlines on the upcoming riot season in Paris are starting to appear, recalling the difficulties that European countries face in boosting their economic performance: reducing unemployment and increasing economic growth. Fareed Zakaria’s article in the Washington Post earlier in 2006 entitled the Decline and Fall of Europe is a quick and readable summary.
Zakaria quotes a particularly interesting OECD report called “Going for Growth” that shows Europe, rather than catching up to America in per capita GDP, has in fact been falling behind over the last 15 years. Efforts to catch up, while noteworthy and politically difficult, have essentially failed. When the GDP figures are adjusted by purchasing power parity (PPP), from country to country and around the world, we end up with shocking tables like the following:
Source: CIA World Factbook
and this:
Source: Adapted from Lewis, The Power of Productivity, 2004.
The United States doesn’t simply lead the world in GDP per capita (PPP adjusted). It is in a class (fully acknowledging its size) entirely by itself. Adding 1 million net citizens every nine months (one every 13 seconds), America is extending its lead in prosperity over not only poor and moderately wealthy nations, but over virtually all of its erstwhile companions on the “heights” of Mount Prosperity. Next-door neighbour Canada is the only eight digit population close to the US, coming in at 78% of US per capita GDP (PPP adjusted).