by Leo Morris Both ends of the alley behind my house were blocked one day last week. It annoyed me no end. But it also set me to thinking about the need to vigorously defend our private property rights even as we acknowledge the proper place of public property in the grand scheme of things. I dare not park in front of my house. My street is one-way east from a popular drinking spot. My…

A FRIEND EXPRESSED ADMIRATION for how quickly I was able to go through the morning newspaper. No, I explained, I’m not a speed reader. Reductions in newsroom staffing have had a lot to do with it, but also I am aided by a lifetime of amalgamated discernment. I know which stories can be ignored at no cost to my working knowledge. I am encouraged to list them here: Stories with headlines imploring that this or that…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. In some ways, immigration is not all that difficult to analyze. The first key is an opening concept from the first course in Microeconomics. When immigrants come here to buy and sell, to work for employers and own businesses, to borrow and invest, and so on, they engage in a wide variety of voluntary, mutually beneficial trades that are good for them and good for society. Of course, there’s more to…

by T. Norman Van Cott Article 1, Section 10, Clause 2 in the Constitution of the United States has been instrumental in making the U.S. economy the powerhouse that it is today. How so, you say? It did so by curbing individual states’ ability to impose tariffs on goods and services coming from or going to other states. This has made the United States a free trade area from its founding in 1789. In fact,…

by Leo Morris I was spending a quiet day amusing myself with harmless diversions. I played a little guitar. I read a few chapters in a mystery novel. I watched part of an old movie on cable. I gave a Sunday newspaper the once-over. I studied my recipe for breakfast quiche to see if I still wanted to use Old Bay as the main seasoning (I did). I thought I was having fun. Silly me.…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. “An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain — the equality of all men.” — Ignazio Silone There has been tons of attention on income (and wealth) inequality in recent years — much of it driven by a nasty combination of ignorance and envy. For example, folks often conflate income inequality at a point in time with a lack of economic mobility over time. One can easily…

AN ELEPHANT HAS ENTERED THE ROOM of Indiana’s economic-development officialdom. Nobody wants to talk about the growing amount of research challenging its policy formula. It costs a lot and it doesn’t seem to work. An adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review last month described it in the inverse. He told a group of Indiana businessmen and opinion leaders they would be better off without any official economic-development effort whatsoever. Rather than provide an economic advantage over…

 by Leo Morris You’ve already heard from Don McLean about “the day the music died.” Call this the day the laughter died. It wasn’t until I glimpsed the monster inside him that I realized how much Bill Cosby had meant to me growing up. Back then, he was the funny man who helped me get through high school with my sanity intact. The monster was well hidden beneath wry observations about family life and urban…

The following is based on comments made at a foundation luncheon April 12, 2018, in Fort Wayne. by Barry Keating, Ph.D. Jerry Brown was elected governor of California in 1974 and again in 1978 before busying himself as mayor of Oakland. Californians in 2010 apparently wanted to return to the days of “Governor Moonbeam,” as Brown was affectionately known, and elected him governor again. Perhaps dating Hollywood movie stars and hanging with Cesar Chavez helped…

“Things reveal themselves passing away. “ — William Butler Yeats Reading analysis of the disaster that was the monologue at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the thought occurs: Can an entire generation in a given profession fail to reach maturity? The old newsroom guard had warned precisely of that. They said modern journalists lacked the judgment any readership expected, that they would be the ruin of the craft. But then, in my memory at…