US Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the Obama administration plans to implement new rules that would reduce sentences for thousands of nonviolent drug offenders currently in federal prisons. This new policy, combined with the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, would allow the administration to commute the mandatory minimum sentences many prisoners received under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. The new approach may feature hundreds of presidential pardons. In the meantime, congress has been considering new legislation (the Smarter Sentencing Act of 2014, still pending) that would cut the remaining minimum sentences in half. This is good policy, but it does not go far enough. Here’s why.
Tag: United States
Inequality: Better to be Greek or Roman?
Oftentimes when we discuss whether or not economic inequality is justifiable, we have the tendency to consider only the most extreme form of the left wing position. The right often defends its model of the market economy by comparing it to the old communist states, to the Soviet Union–countries in which everyone, at least in theory, had the same income. In places like the Soviet Union, incentives fell apart. If you will be paid the same amount no matter how much work you do, there is little reason to do additional work. The trouble is that this argument straw mans all left wing positions as strictly egalitarian. The left wing position need not be that societies should be perfectly economically equal, it need merely be that much of the economic inequality we see is superfluous and unnecessary. That is the argument I intend to make today.
Jon Stewart is Not an Economist
Today the treasury ruled out the magic coin, the denarius ex machina meant to save us from yet another debt ceiling fight. But before it did, Jon Stewart decided to give his opinion on the coin to his nationwide audience of over 2 million people, many of whom get their news from his show and from few other places. Unfortunately, Stewart decided to use his show to misinform the public. While many pundits and programmes disinform the American population on a daily basis, Stewart is often viewed as credible. What I am about to detail should remove that hard-won credibility.
