Links for 2007-02-01

• USNews.com: Mortimer B. Zuckerman: For a fairer America, 2006-10-02

  Three government initiatives to allow greater economic equity among all Americans suggest themselves urgently:

  • More support for education at all levels;
  • A major effort to brake soaring healthcare costs;
  • A new minimum wage-it was last raised nearly a decade ago, and its purchasing power has deteriorated to the lowest inflation-adjusted level since 1955.

  He gets it so wrong; here's why.

  • Getting government out of education would improve competition, increase choices, and help rid students and graudates (which almost all US citizens are) of the prison mentality.
  • Healthcare needs more competition and basically no government intrusion; if the government has not "fixed" health care by now, why would adding more of it to it somehow make things better? Remove the US citizenship requirement for doctors, remove the AMA as de-facto physician gatekeeper, and get rid of the job-health insurance link. Why should I have to worry about my health insurance when I apply for a job?
  • Minimum wage raises living standards for some people, and for other it reduces them. If you cannot understand this, stop supporting minimum wage and go buy a book on economics. Read the book. Think hard. Then come back and try to argue for minimum wage.

• USNews.com: Mortimer B. Zuckerman: The devil and Mr. Chávez, 2006-10-09

• USNews.com: Fouad Ajami: The new boys of terror, 2006-10-09

• USNews.com: A Man With a Very Different Kind of Bank Wins Nobel, 2006-10-23

  In choosing to award both Yunus and his for-profit bank, the Nobel committee has also lent credence to the increasingly popular notion among development experts that democracy-and, indeed, peace itself-is best achieved by channeling simple, if enlightened, self-interest.

  Yunus wholeheartedly agrees. "Charity is not an answer to poverty," he writes of the company's business model, which last year helped Grameen log $15 million in profits. "It only helps poverty to continue. It creates dependency and takes away individuals' initiative to break through the wall of poverty. Unleashing of energy and creativity in each human being is the answer to poverty."

• USNews.com: Michael Barone: Stuck in the '60s, 2006-11-13

• USNews.com: Letter from Hiroshima, Japan: Rethinking the Bomb, 2006-12-04

  However, the question of which nuclear countries pose the greatest threat to the rest of the world elicits a reply that may surprise many in the West. When asked, (Setsuko) Iwamoto (Japanese citizen, age 74, Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor) and her friends reply, "North Korea." And after that? "America."

  Ms. Iwamoto, who started World War II? And did you ever learn what happened in Nanjing?

• USNews.com: Michael Barone: Sticking to His Guns, 2006-12-11