Well, it’s happened again–we’ve reached the start of another US presidential election cycle. Ted Cruz is the first candidate to declare his intent to run. Now, when I started this blog in August 2012, we were most of the way through the presidential election cycle, so I need to make some decisions about how I’m going to write about it this year. So far, here’s the plan–every time a major candidate declares intent to run, regardless of party affiliation, I will write an initial post analyzing the candidate as a statesman in an attempt to determine whether or not the candidate is fit to govern a society. Beyond that, I will write about controversies that interest me as they arise.
Author: Benjamin Studebaker
The Oklahoma Racism Scandal: Why It’s Wrong to Punish the Students
The University of Oklahoma was recently scandalized when footage emerged in which members of the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon sang a revoltingly racist song:
This should make us think long and hard–how are young people acquiring racist beliefs? What are the social, economic, and environmental factors that lead young people to think negatively of other people based on their racial background? To what extent is wider society influenced by these same factors? How can we mitigate them and create a more fair and just society? But we’re not asking any of these questions. Instead, we’re going after the students and patting ourselves on the back for not being racist. That’s a mistake–here’s why.
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Why You Should Get a Raise
Since the global economic crisis of 2008, many of the world’s advanced economies continue to struggle to recover. In many of these countries, growth since the crisis has been much slower than it was in the years prior. Indeed, when we look closely, we see that the 2004-2007 growth average is higher than the 2010-2013 average in just about all the major advanced economies, and that in some countries this difference is very large:
What’s holding back recovery? To understand this, we need to understand what kind of economic crisis we’re trying to recover from in the first place. Continue reading “Why You Should Get a Raise”
A Serious Policy Analysis of House of Cards’ “America Works” Program
I am a huge fan of Netflix’s House of Cards, which stars Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood, a ruthless political anti-hero. Here’s the trailer, if you haven’t seen it. It’s really good:
I launched into the 3rd season yesterday and was fascinated by Underwood’s “America Works” proposal. Very minor spoilers here–Underwood plans to eliminate or restructure America’s entitlement programs, using the money saved to create 10 million jobs, which will apparently cost $500 billion. Now, this is a television show. There are no CBO reports to look at, no detailed policy analyses or public policy research, but I want to dig into this and take the opportunity to explore some of the issues with entitlement programs.
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Should People Have a Right to Have Children?
Many of my blog posts make some pretense of having something to do with a current event or news item. But sometimes I find myself thinking about larger issues of general principle that do not easily map onto any of the day’s controversies. This is that sort of post. I’ve recently found myself thinking about whether or not human beings should have an inalienable right to have children. It seems to me that we commonly assume that people do or should have this right, but it is not at all obvious to me that this is really the case. Here’s why.
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Benjamin Studebaker 