The Financial Times reports on a study commissioned by New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Sen. Chuck Schumer, which found that excessive regulation may be undermining the city’s status as a global financial capital.

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A Slashdot contributor editorializes about a survey purporting to show that, all the sound and fury notwithstanding, offshoring has not been a net source of job loss in the tech sector: The article quotes the executive director of the SIIA as saying, ‘[Offshoring] was used almost entirely as a form of expansion, not as a […]

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Citizens Against Government Waste compares their own ideal earmark reform with proposals offered by the president and congressional Dems. Short version: They’re not utterly satisfied with what’s on the table, but this is a good first step forward.

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Jagdish Bhagwati argues that technological innovation—rather than everyone’s favorite bugbear, globalization—is responsible for keeping down the wages of low-skilled workers.

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Atrios guest-blogger Echidne responds to George Will’s latest column, in which he argues that the proper minimum wage is zero, with a post that… well, let me just let this line speak for itself: Why not allow the minimum wage be negative? Workers could pay the employers. There is nothing magical about the number zero, […]

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Lots of us small-government types were pleasantly surprised by Dems’ willingness to keep funding for the coming year at 2006 levels, stripping out billions in pork pending earmark reform. The New York Times has, uh, a different take: The delay was initially due to infighting among Republicans, sparked by President Bush, who gunned for a […]

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Interesting claim from U.S. News columnist Bonnie Erbe that only 15 million of the 45 million uninsured in America are in households earning less thant $25,000 annually. She suggests that the government could buy catastrophic health insurance for all of them at about $3,000 each, and leave the better off to attend to their own […]

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A solid column by Sebastian Mallaby looks at our strange double standards about pioneering entrepreneurs in areas like technology and in the much-maligned world of hedge funds.

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There’s an interesting piece at Slate arguing, pace Richard Epstein, that allowing the government to negotiate bulk pharmaceutical prices for seniors won’t harm industry innovation… because it’s unlikely to lower prices much either.

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Ezra links to a critical survey in The Guardian of the late Milton Friedman’s policy achievements—one that appeared so quickly that I have to assume, like obituaries, it had been written well in advance, just waiting for the balding-grey eminence of free-market economics to expire. It’s a sobering tonic insofar as its a reminder of […]

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