When natural disasters or other emergencies hit our state, North Carolinians respond in droves — and I’m not just referring to the crucial and praiseworthy work of public employees who work in emergency management, public safety, and public works. North Carolinians respond in many other ways, large and small. They form, fund, and staff nonprofits...
A thought occurred to me as I was traveling through the North Carolina Piedmont last week. The notion didn’t have to do with my location but was instead prompted by the lecture I was listening to on the way. It was one of an excellent series on the world’s political hot spots issued by a...
I’ve been writing a newspaper column since 1986. During that time, I’ve had occasion to criticize the policies of six North Carolina governors: Jim Martin, Jim Hunt, Mike Easley, Beverly Perdue, Pat McCrory, and Roy Cooper. None has seen fit to have me flogged. An ancestor of mine, William Pendley, wasn’t so lucky. Some years...
Few people on Earth are as generous as Americans are, and North Carolinians are more generous still — we rank 10th in the U.S. in charitable giving.
Ideas are powerful. They change minds and motivate behavior. They are also potentially dangerous.
In this relatively short but highly illuminating book, economics professors Philipp Bagus and David Howden (both of whom are schooled in Austrian theory) explain the collapse of Iceland’s economy in 2008. Why bother with the difficulties of that little nation (population 313,000) in the remote North Atlantic? The reason is that the Icelandic debacle stemmed from exactly the same governmental blunders that have caused so many other boom and bust cycles around the globe. Iceland’s horrible recent experience has important lessons for Americans — indeed for people everywhere.
Americans worry that an individual's place on the economic ladder is determined more by an accident of birth than a person's talent and industry.
Those who dismiss complaints about ideological balance and diversity in public universities ask what the harm is in exposing students to "new ideas." Are they serious?
William Pendley was arrested and charged with sedition. A Maryland court convicted him and sentenced him to be imprisoned and whipped with 20 lashes.
Finally, a column about the merits of declaring a National Rutabaga Week. Excited about reading it? That's the point.
Now that other countries are reforming the tax codes, our incoherent and capricious corporate tax is becoming increasingly costly.
