- Does poverty create terrorists? If the answer rests with statistical correlations, one’s perspective has much to do with how the data are manipulated. Alan Krueger offers this corrective to the prevailing view (NYT) “Once a country’s degree of civil liberties is taken into account--measured by Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that promotes democracy, as the extent to which citizens are free to develop views, institutions and personal autonomy without interference from the state--income per capita bears no relation to involvement in terrorism. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, which have spawned relatively many terrorists, are economically well off yet lacking in civil liberties. Poor countries with a tradition of protecting civil liberties are unlikely to spawn terrorists.Evidently, the freedom to assemble and protest peacefully without interference from the government goes a long way to providing an alternative to terrorism.”
- Paul Wolfowitz, widely regarded as the mastermind behind the Iraq fiasco, says (reports Boston.com) that eliminating yet-unfound WMD’s was the only reason everyone could agree on, so it became the public rationale for the war. The real reason, he said, was to oust Saddam so as to permit a US pullout from Saudi Arabia and thereby eliminate a major source spot among the Muslim population of the region. As for the WMD, this was touted “for bureaucratic reasons.”
- A study commission by the Treasury Department argued that closing the gap between spending and revenue would “require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66% across-the-board income tax increase,” according to the Financial Times, as reported by the BBC. The report was buried. See Ostrowski today on the real tax burden.
- Here is the original Financial Times piece, which also quotes some economists who are frustrated at the hyper-politicized language of the budget debate and how it obscures realities.
