Economic Illiteracy and Presidential Candidates

Both Senator Obama and Senator McCain have offered numerous proposals that are almost audacious in their economic illiteracy. As president, Senator Obama would do well to reexamine the economics of the changes he is proposing. Especially in a turbulent economy, many of his proposals exemplify exactly the kind of change we don’t need.

read the entire essay

Cartoon: Bush is a Socialist

Cartoon: It's The Economy Stupid

Cartoon: Palin's Energy Plan

Cartoon: Good News

Taxes: McCain v Obama

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McCain v Obama Tax Plan

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My Comments: Remember this is analysis of their plans by one group. A candidates plan must be implemented by Congress which ALWAYS makes changes.

McCain and Obama Tax Plans

read the CNN story

for more information click here

McCain v Obama: The Economy

Barack Obama's emergence as the presumptive Democratic nominee on Tuesday sets the stage for a sharp partisan debate over the issue weighing most heavily on voters: the economy.

Over the past several months, as concern grew about the nation's struggling economy, few major differences surfaced between the proposals of Obama and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

But that's not the case between Obama and John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. The two senators part company on taxes, health care, entitlement benefits and other key economic issues that the next resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. will need to tackle.

At the root of their differences: their views on tax policy and the roles of government and the markets in achieving economic and social goals.

read the CNN story

Wow. Who Knew There Were 60 States?

The Candidates on Trade

Race to the Bottom: The Presidential Candidates' Positions on
Trade by Sallie James

In recent weeks the economy has been in the headlines and in the sights of politicians seeking the presidency. Particularly on the Democratic side, the candidates have sought to paint a picture of a doom-and-gloom economy and a convenient culprit: the trade policies of the Bush administration.

Although Sen. John McCain has largely stuck to his free-trade principles, even when it might have been politically expedient to appeal to voters’ worst instincts, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have entered into a seemingly escalating war of words over the alleged damage done by trade liberalization. As news about the economy worsened and crucial primary contests in industrial states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania approached, the rhetoric reached a nadir.

As voters consider the mix of policy offerings by the candidates, a look at their records on trade during their time in Congress and their statements during the campaign can give some early guidance as to the direction of the next administration’s trade policy. Although trade votes are a necessarily imperfect yardstick with which to measure future policy—packaged as they often are with other, sometimes contradictory, legislation—they seem to be consistent with the campaign pledges of the candidates.

Voters could expect a President Mc-Cain to promote freer trade and cuts in market-distorting subsidies, and a President Clinton or a President Obama to view free trade between voluntary actors as something to be restrained, loaded with conditions, or counterbalanced by an expansion of the welfare state.

read the report

Cartoon: The Issue of the 2008 Election

2008 Election

Millions of voting parasites, led by single females, are getting ready to accelerate the destruction of the idea of individuality, private property rights, self-reliance and this very country by putting a hideous, power-hungry leftist into the White House.

Neal Boortz 1/1/2008

If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you've already got half the vote.

Aegyptophilus

recommended reading:

Three Amendments: Responsibility, Generality, and Natural Liberty
by James Buchanan (a founder of public choice theory)

The Myth of the Rational Voter


more on Public Choice Theory

Public Choice Theory

Prediction Markets

Best Bet for Next President: Prediction Markets by Justin Wolfers

As the 2008 presidential race heats up, voters are overwhelmed by a flood of new data: Who is ahead in the polls? Who is winning the "money race"? How are the dynamics of the race likely to respond as the candidates tack left and right, advertising strategies change, and we learn whose Web site is drawing more eyeballs?

Political prediction markets provide us -- the consumers of this information -- with a way to cut through this clutter.

A prediction market is a bit like the stock market, except that you are buying shares whose value depends on the success of a political candidate, rather than the profits earned by a corporation. And just as stock prices are a useful barometer of the health of a company, so too the price of a prediction contract is a barometer of the health of a political campaign.

It is the accuracy of market-generated forecasts that led the Department of Defense to propose running prediction markets on geopolitical events. While political rhetoric about "terrorism futures" led the plug to be pulled on that particular experiment, the original insight -- that markets can help make sense of vast amounts of disparate information-- remains valid…

In a truly efficient prediction market, the price will come to reflect the influence of all available information…

Through this process of different people trading based on their own observations about the race, prediction markets prices come to aggregate disparate pieces of information into a single summary measure of the likelihood of various outcomes….

Two other characteristics also distinguish prediction markets. First, they respond to all sorts of news beyond shifts in public opinion, including changes in campaign staff, political re-positioning, and performance on the trail.

Second, prediction markets are forward-looking, while polls are often backward-looking…

from the WSJ

more on prediction markets:

Pricing Political Risk with Prediction Markets

Prediction Markets