Looking at the relationship between protectionism, subsidies, and world hunger, American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar Adam Lerrick writes: The world has the ability to feed itself at affordable prices. There is no shortage of productive land. Large tracts in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Brazil offer huge potential. Putting fallow acres back into production could quadruple Russian cereal output to 300 million tons each year. The labor, technology, and capital are all at the ready. So why has the market failed to respond to this most basic of human needs? In the …
The rise in gas prices is reducing the American consumer’s disposable income, forcing a choice between filling up the tank and going out to dinner or taking a trip to the movie theater. But policy implementations in developed countries are doing much more damage internationally, like pushing 30 million people into poverty. That’s the latest number, according to Oxfam International, a confederation of 13 organizations that seek to alleviate poverty worldwide. It boils down to a combination of special interest politics and simple economics, says Oxfam’s biofuel policy adviser Rob …
Considering their recent fumbles, no one can rightly accuse House Republicans of being marketing geniuses. But the campaign they launched last month, the “Pelosi Premium,” highlighting how Democrat energy policy drives up the cost of gasoline, is dead on. Covering congressional energy policy, the Politico today dismissively writes of the GOP slogan: “as if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) personally sets the price of gas at every filling station across the land.” The Politico may have reporters with great Washington contacts, but the newspaper needs to send its reporters back …
One of the biggest lies coming out of both liberal presidential candidates this year is that instituting mandatory carbon caps will not have any adverse economic impacts on Americans since both candidates also promise to spend billions to create “green collar jobs.” So far real working Americans are not buying this sham as witnessed by the dozens of hard-hatted steelworkers that drove to Annapolis to kill Gov. Martin O’Malley’s (D) carbon cap bill. Congress’ understanding of basic economics is even worse. Last year liberals drove the body to pass a …
Al Gore has warned a group of leading investment managers at a UN-sponsored conference to cleanse their portfolios of “subprime carbon assets.” In Gore’s mind, businesses that rely on carbon-intensive energy are bad investments — or should be, and Wall Street should see them as riskier than “clean energy” companies because global warming concerns will result in new taxes or other ways to increase the cost of certain types of fuel. In an ideal Al Gore world, the investors would help him create his own self-fulfilling prophecy by immediately selling …
