What the Economics of College is all about!= one page article=101 page comments By Chandra

Thomas Sowell is a great living free market economist, who never hesitated, to argue his heart felt strong ideas that are not only radical in nature but also intellectual with lucid in character. I read hundred’s of his articles and some of his videos also.

The most recent one is such a great article. I have just collocated all his comments posted for this article, really it is interesting,

The Economics of CollegeBy Thomas SowellTuesday, April 22, 2008
A front-page headline in the New York Times captures much of the economic confusion of our time: "Fewer Options Open to Pay for Costs of College."
The whole article is about the increased costs of college, the difficulties parents have in paying those costs, and the difficulties that both students and parents have in trying to borrow the money needed when their current incomes will not cover college costs.
All that is fine for a purely "human interest" story. But making economic policies on the basis of human interest stories -- which is what politicians increasingly do, especially in election years -- has a big down side for those people who do not happen to be in the categories chosen to write human interest stories about.
The general thrust of human interest stories about people with economic problems, whether they are college students or people faced with mortgage foreclosures, is that the government ought to come to their rescue, presumably because the government has so much money and these individuals have so little.
Like most "deep pockets," however, the government's deep pockets come from vast numbers of people with much shallower pockets. In many cases, the average taxpayer has lower income than the people on whom the government lavishes its financial favors.
Costs are not just things for government to help people to pay. Costs are telling us something that is dangerous to ignore.
The inadequacy of resources to produce everything that everyone wants is the fundamental fact of life in every economy -- capitalist, socialist or feudal. This means that the real cost of anything consists of all the other things that could have been produced with those same resources.
Building a bridge means using up resources that could have been used building homes or a hospital. Going to college means using up vast amounts of resources that could be used for all sorts of other things.
Prices force people to economize. Subsidizing prices enables people to take more resources away from other uses without having to weigh the real cost.
Without market prices that convey the real costs of resources denied to alternative users, people waste.
That was the basic reason why Soviet industries used more electricity than American industries to produce a smaller output than American industries produced. That is why they used more steel and cement to produce less than Japan or Germany produced when making things that required steel and cement.
When you pay the full cost -- that is, the full value of the resources in alternative uses -- you tend to economize. When you pay less than that, you tend to waste.
Whether someone goes to college at all, what kind of college, and whether they remain on campus to do postgraduate work, are all questions about how much of the resources that other people want are to be taken away and used by those on whom we have arbitrarily focused in human interest stories.
This is not just a question about robbing Peter to pay Paul. The whole society's standard of living is lower when resources are shifted from higher valued uses to lower valued uses and wasted by those who are subsidized or otherwise allowed to pay less.
The fact that the Soviet economic system allowed industries to use resources wastefully meant that the price was paid not in money but in a far lower standard of living for the Soviet people than the available technology and resources were capable of producing.
The Soviet Union was one of the world's most richly endowed nations in natural resources -- if not the most richly endowed. Yet many of its people lived almost as if they were in the Third World.
How many people would go to college if they had to pay the real cost of all the resources taken from other parts of the economy? Probably a lot fewer people.
Moreover, when paying their own money, there would probably not be nearly as many people parting with hard cash to study feel-good subjects with rap sessions instead of serious study.
There would probably be fewer people lingering on campus for the social scene or as a refuge from adult responsibilities in the real world.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.
The full comments here

Mr Edward de Bono, you are absurdly wrong! By Chandra

This is with reference to The Indian Express interview of Walk the Talk with Dr Edward de Bono on Published on 21 April, 2008.

In this interview, Dr Edward de Bono said that “You know something interesting about Islam? The Prophet Muhammad had more to say about thinking than any other religious leader”.

This statement is totally wrong and also misleads the Indian society and the world on the subject of religion.

It seems that Dr Edward is absurdly ignorant of what Swami Vivekananda said more than hundred years ago was “If you read the Koran, you find the most wonderful truths mixed with superstitions how will you explain it? That man was inspired, no doubt, but that inspiration was, as it were, stumbled upon. He was not a trained Yogi, and did not know the reason of what he was doing. Think of the good Mohammed did to the world, and think of the great evil that has been done through his fanaticism! Think of the millions massacred through his teachings, mothers bereft of their children, children made orphans, whole countries destroyed millions upon millions of people killed (The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1, page.184).

When we have, such a versatile man of the great philosopher of he world Religion How such misleading statement simply eating out of mouths in Indian as well as world society. One can say, one of the great philosopher, who explained deeply was Swami Vivekananda.

Basic Economics is killed allegedly! By Chandra

Atilio Borón writes from a recent meeting and actually he made strong observation with our intellectuals ideas, particularly the below paragraph is worth notice.
“In line with its predecessor, the new book is a distillation of prejudices, stereotypes and commonplace statements, warped by exhausted and sterile minds. It would waste of time and energy to try to find a single sophisticated theoretical argument amongst its pages in defence of neoliberalism of the kind embodied by Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises or Karl Popper. What there is, however, is an accumulation of ideas that do nothing more than serve to feed the most reactionary and recalcitrant spirits, and a profound disrespect for what, in scientific circles, is known as “evidence”, that is to say, the support given by data extracted from experience to a theoretical argument”. The full article is here.

Road to Indian Citizen by Chandra

Sun stealer, moon stealer and men stealer what not, just it here. I am very much subscribed to F A Hayek but not all! Every Indian should be taught in every educational institutions about one of his celebrated and severe criticized book “The Road to Serfdom” published in 1944. I like the below paragraph.

“If I had my way, every man and woman who legally enters this country would immediately be issued a copy of F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” and a Kalashnikov, and the legal definition of terrorist would be resolved as “ready source of organs.” However, my problems with John McCain are twofold. My first problem is that he wants to militarize society. He has a history of attacking constitutional rights and liberties and if you’ve ever listened to his anti-individualist rhetoric, it becomes clear that he wants to turn America into some sort of Spartan, military state”.

The constitution of 49.5% of India poor by Chandra

This constitution of India is all nothing but the cumulative of Indian political achievements, what a pity great achievements not to be changed that is their another motive (different story) to ruin the poor by way of saying the basic structure is the poor they can not be changed in terms of public policies of political, they should not be in terms of Indian political constitutional terms………
But for all their (political lobby’s) conveniences everything can be and will be changed, are the young India hanging on their own way of honest understanding, I hope but some! Other kills on the political feet’s. my dear readers lets boot here for some time.

The tale of two right points! By Chandra

A point to A Point is the right point, it’s not so, I do think. Read what a point
"Karat is either an extraordinarily stupid man, or has allowed his inflated opinion of himself to turn him into an enemy of the Indian people".

There is no such thing as MACRO! By Chandra

After read friend Jayakamal mail on The Muddle that is Macro, by Arnold Kling. The last line of that post read like this “Every macroeconomic pronouncement should be accompanied by a disclaimer that says, "This is just my opinion. We don't really know."
Within few second I got another mail, it is exactly on the same subject of MACRO what a pity macro. It reads
“It reminds me of the moment back in 1971 when Richard Nixon proclaimed, "We are all Keynesians now" -- eight years after Milton Friedman had published his book "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960" and about an hour and a half before a consensus built that Friedman's work consigned Keynes to the dustbin of economic history”.
To my mind the macro means, the sky, the sea and the earth nothing else, never think that the human being are macro in their mind, it is stupid that to think!

Ogd Biscuits for illogical economists! By Chandra

“It is perhaps not surprising that biscuit manufacturers, like other businesses, should use their influence to sell their products. As Milton Friedman famously said, “The business of business is business.” What is more disturbing is the way MPs reacted to this lobbying operation” more ogd biscuits is here
No Milton Friedman sensed something else! These subhuman economist understood wrongly, isn’t so, a true liberal economics students never accept this kind of interpretations.

The muddled Indian economist: Nothing is guarantee by chandra

The muddled Indian economist turned to argue differently with no surprise "the NREGA pays people for 'work', it keeps them away from other productive, income-generating activity. This is bad for the nation and also for the workers. If they were just given the money, they could have done more work and earned more".
My question is simple whether he will agree for education voucher also in the same logic? I don't think so,

Worth, which is that reading, are the questions evaluated between the tale of good and evil? By Chandra

The Market Corrects Itself
Posted 2008-04-04
Adam Smith Was Right
Leave it to political economist Thomas Sowell to provide perspective and a dollop of simplicity to the tangled web that is the current state of the American economy. If anything, Mr. Sowell, in a recent column, reminds us that whenever Washington takes it upon itself to resolve problems, particularly economic ones, precedents are set and special-interest demands for like treatment multiply.
In this particular instance — intervention in the housing industry crisis — the implicit danger is that when steps are taken to minimize risk, the potential for reward, the linchpin of capitalism, is ultimately compromised. Government cannot always be expected to save people from themselves — and their capricious financial decisions.
Still, the urge to make things right is an irresistible one for politicians and their appointees, particularly in an election year. Hence, the gadarene rush for government to do the work of markets. But here's the rub: As The Wall Street Journal observed editorially Tuesday, the market, in the spirit and tradition of its everlasting guiding light, the 18th-century Scottish economist Adam Smith, had already begun to self-correct, sans government regulation.
The last few weeks, the Journal reported, have witnessed a gradual return to more conservative principles, as "the decade's great experiment in direct, unmediated lending is undergoing an Adam Smith cleansing ... In his wisdom, the Professor from Glasgow is now moving more of those direct-lending assets back on bank balance sheets where there is a capital safety net to write off the losses without busting the entire financial system."
Now, does this exercise in self-realization render a 218-page remediation plan advanced Monday by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson superfluous? Not necessarily. Like the spirit of Dr. Smith, Mr. Paulson assumes the role of "untangler." His plan to overhaul regulation of the nation's financial system seeks not only to simplify, consolidate, and correct, but also to untie the knots of a regulatory approach increasingly incapable of adapting to the challenges posed by a technologically intricate market economy. In this sense, the plan is commendable.
But, in saying this, we offer a caveat, courtesy of The Journal: "Today's credit panic isn't some ‘crisis of capitalism' that needs a vast new layer of regulation. We are living through the aftermath of a societal credit mania fueled by excessive money creation. The regulators are as much to blame as the regulated, and Adam Smith is providing more punishment and reform than Washington ever will." Opinion mania

Americans just won't do those jobs by chandra

Immigration economics nice analysis yet Sowell research yields! "Stanford economist Thomas Sowell puts it this way: "Even in occupations where illegals are concentrated, such as agriculture, cleaning, construction, and food preparation, the great majority of the work is still being done by people who are not illegal aliens."
Sowell notes that even in agriculture, the industry with the highest concentration of illegal workers, more than three-quarters of the work force is legal. Adding a measure of enforcement to the current no-match letters might, in fact, have the salutary benefit of prompting employers to consider hiring the 478,553 Texans who were unemployed in February. Hundreds of thousands of Texans are part of a readily available work force who can fill low-skill jobs.
Furthermore, Sowell's research puts the lie to the argument that "Americans just won't do those jobs." Americans can and will fill the jobs currently held by the illegal work force -- they need a chance to do so. The president's proposal should prompt businesses to look to the unemployed as the best option for filling jobs, and it just might help alleviate strains on taxpayers".Read further here not apocalypse.

Gulpi Welfare by chandra

It is interesting line for muse and man a fish, as the Thomas Sowell, an American economist, stated, "One of the consequences of such notions as 'entitlements' is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence."

Awful Economists have predicted 10 of the last 2 recessions by Chandra

This kind of prediction perhaps the lay man can do much better than the trained economist!
Let’s read the Surjit S Bhalla: Race to the Bottom article on India’s growth prediction and wait and see who will loose and who will gain at what price!