Forbes Magazine Rocks, as Usual
A typical issue of Forbes has lots of items that could be blogged because, unlike Biz Weak, Forbes is a consistently strong and useful magazine.
Here are just a few from the most recent issue (all items require paid subscription).
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Steve Forbes on inflation (requires paid subscription) echoes Don Luskin:
The Latest Inflation Numbers main disturbing. The Fed doesn’t need to raise interest rates. It just needs to drain the excess liquidity it created, until the gold price–the best monetary barometer–goes down to the $400 range. But Chairman Ben Bernanke will likely dawdle. And then overreact.
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Steve Forbes also notices that mainland China is making moves towards respecting private property rights:
Despite myriad social, political and economic problems, China’s long-term prospects were exponentially improved by the enactment in March of the country’s first law to explicitly protect private property.
….. Without a more secure body of property rights, China’s impressive boom inevitably would have wound down as innovation and entrepreneurial risk-taking withered. Instead the burgeoning middle class will become wealthier and feel more secure about the future–and will thus be more independent-minded. All this bodes well for future liberalization of Chinese politics.
….. The Chinese property rights law aroused fierce opposition inside and outside the government from still-strong leftists. Perhaps the powers that be had read and taken to heart De Soto’s classic work The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, in which he discusses how crucial secure property rights are to achieving prosperity.
Mao is spinning in his grave. Too bad, so sad.
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Talk about a radical restructuring — Sanford Ikeda advocates breaking up New Orleans into a number of smaller independent villages. Good idea; Ikeda says that “voting with one’s feet wouldn’t necessarily mean leaving the city.” Does anyone want to argue that the typical large city is better run than the typical medium-sized suburb?
