Weekly Links 12/14/2024
1) A headline in the NYT: "Kennedy's Lawyer has Asked the FDA to Revoke Approval of the Polio Vaccine."
Comments Dan Gardner on Substack:
"I suppose there is some internal logic to this: America was great in the 1950s; American had polio in the 1950s; so....
Make Polio Great Again"
2) The shameful online praise for the killer of UHC's CEO leads the writer who calls himself "Cremieux" (after a 19th-century French liberal politician) to an examination of the killer's Manifesto and an in-depth look at the reality of U.S. healthcare spending and the health insurance companies --
3) Paul Krugman has left the NYT and is now writing an online newsletter called "Krugman Wonks Out." (You can subscribe for free). Here's an appreciation of Krugman from Scott Sumner, who often disagrees with Paul on policy issues --
https://www.econlib.org/paul-krugman-retires-from-the-nyt/
Krugman is great at explaining complex issues, like international trade and investment, and how "invincibly ignorant" Trump is on these matters --
4) David Henderson reposted a piece he wrote in 2009, sensibly distinguishing "privilege" from wealth and explaining what privilege really is and where it comes from --
5) Former Senator Phil Gramm and economist Don Boudreaux published a column a little while ago in the Wall Street Journal exposing all the ways Trump's tariffs, if implemented, would be bad for economic growth --
and, say economists at the Peterson Institute, "Analysis of current trade flows and tariff rates indicates that machinery and electronics and electrical machinery will face the largest import tax burden if the incoming administration implements Trump’s promised duty hikes." --
6) The Aspen Economic Strategy Group has released a new book on American economic dynamism, which can be downloaded in full or chapter-by-chapter --
https://www.economicstrategygroup.org/publication/economic-dynamism/
7) This review of a new book by Adam Kirsch focuses on the view of history called "settler colonialism," which has provided a large part of the ideological fuel feeding pro-Hamas, anti-Israel sentiment within the global left. The author nicely summarizes Kirsch's excellent treatment but this atheist has to part company with him when, in his last four paragraphs, he advocates a return to Christianity to counter the "crisis" of the West. That's the wrong way to go and, in any case, it's too late --
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the-misdirection-of-settler-colonialism/
8) If you're looking for a great explanation of a fundamental concept in the physical sciences, have a look at this summary of the current state of debate on "entropy" --
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-entropy-a-measure-of-just-how-little-we-really-know-20241213/