Tim Hortons Inc.,the largest fast- food chain in Canada, filed to reorganize as a Canadian company to lower its tax rate.
Tim Hortons, which presently operates out of Oakville, Ontario, will become a unit of a Canadian-based parent with the same name, the company said today in a statement. Its current parent is based in Delaware.
No need to comment. Story here.
From CNN.
Plainclothes investigators sent to test security at federal buildings in four U.S. cities were successful in smuggling bomb components through guard posts at all 10 of the sites they visited, according to a government report.
The investigators then assembled the bombs in restrooms and freely entered numerous government offices while carrying the devices in briefcases, the report said.
If security does not check for bombs, then why should I expect public sector empoyees to check for fraud.
I always enjoy reading something by one of my dissertation committee members in the major news outlets. Todd Zywicki writes
Instead of a new consumer financial products safety commission, Washington should revise the disclosures it mandates for mortgages, its tax and other incentives that encourage overinvestment in housing, and the incentives for homeowners to walk away from their homes. Our current problems are caused by misaligned incentives and the rational response of consumers and lenders to those incentives. It's not a crisis of consumer protection. A new agency premised on the erroneous belief what consumers need is to be protected from themselves is likely to do more harm than good.
Best I can tell, almost all proposed regulations depend on the assumed ignorance of consumers. Someone must be the victim. The current "reforms" to the mortgage industry are a case in point. Create a safety product commission and the problem virtually disappears. However, many foreclosures are perfectly rational, the borrower weighed the costs and benefits of being foreclosed and chose optimally. Ignorance was not the problem; the incentives were. Maybe the Obama Adminstration should establish a Financial Market Incentive Alignment Commision instead.
The strength of unions during apartheid hindered economic development. The union workers had little incentive to raise productivity. Since 1994, not much has changed. The unions retain political power and use it to limit labor market reforms. Now this.
Some 70,000 construction workers in South Africa have gone on strike, halting work on stadiums being built for the 2010 World Cup. Unions are threatening to wreck the tournament if their demands for a 13% wage increase are not met.
A 13% percent wage increase during a worldwide recession and when inflation is around 8% seems reasonable.
The city of Los Angeles contributed a few million dollars but is a bit short on funds. In response,
The Los Angeles mayor has asked fans of Michael Jackson for help in covering the estimated $4million cost of today’s funeral and memorial service.
Why not have the Jacksons pay for the it?
The Liberian President made some bad decisions in her past.
Liberia's truth and reconciliation commission has recommended barring President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and dozens of other high-profile figures from public office for 30 years for supporting armed groups in the country's civil wars.
Sirleaf, 70, acknowledged before the commission in February that she gave up to $10,000 to a rebel group headed by Charles Taylor. Sirleaf said the money she sent while an expatriate was meant for humanitarian services and that she was never a member of the group, the National Patriotic Front.
Sirleaf, to her credit, has performed well during her Presidency. The civil war could have resumed but it did not. She has pushed for educational reforms. Aapparently many knew about the financial support for Taylor. But should she be barred from public office? Tentatively, I think not. Let the Liberian people decide. If she made an honest mistake, why punish her. If she supported him, throw her out. How barring her from public office attains the goals of reconciliation, I am not sure.
"Bay Is a Threat To Humans, Too"
The same pollution problems that afflict the Chesapeake Bay's fish and crabs -- high levels of mercury in fish, neon-colored algae blooms and voracious bacteria -- can also threaten the health of people who fish, boat and swim in the estuary, according to a new report.
Of course global warming is one cause (it causes just about everything). But are there lessons for the current environmental debates? Are complex environmental systems robust to public policy and preference changes? Did policy makers apply the wrong model to change the situation? After 25 years, has the "Save the bay" campaign passed a cost-benefit test?
Even where it is legal, the world's oldest profession seems to have limited access to credit.
Amsterdam city council is turning its attention to a pressing problem for one of the city's key business sectors -- banking and credit for prostitutes who can't get accounts from mainstream institutions.
The city's red light district is famed the world over for its women in tiny windows and even tinier clothing, but despite the trade being legal, many banks shy away from taking the ladies on as customers.
Public sector employees show how much they care about the less fortunate. Felix Salmon reports on who receives cash and who gets IOUS in CA. No surprise here. (HT: Craig Newmark)
The contents that had to be memorized included 431286 Chinese characters, not to mention the annotations which were several times longer, and other related historical, literary classics (Miyazaki, 1976, p.16). But memorization was not the most difficult part of this examination. The real difficulties lied in the ability to write creatively, this constituted the intellectual contest element of the exam. Only those with outstanding talents and devoted most of their efforts into the Confucian study could stand out in the rounds and rounds of competition. The coverage of the tests was limited only to the teaching of the Confucian school, basically its most fundamental readings: the Four Books and the Five Classics. Generally, twenty years were needed simply to participate in all these examinations.
It would appear that China had attained high levels of human capital. But human capital takes many forms.
In summary, because the civil-service examination system focused only on the Confucianism and the literary skills, most of the talented people in China were fully devoted to either the civil-service examination or the research of humanities. They lacked the incentives to learn and accumulate skills in mathematics and controlled experiment, not to mention the ability to combine the two, formalize the knowledge in mathematical forms and test through experiments. As a result, scientific revolution could not spontaneously take place in China, even though Chinahad satisfied many of the crucial conditions for the industrial revolution and capitalism had sprouted as early as in the 14th century.
The incentives placed to great an emphasis on the humanities and not enough on the scientific inquiry. No one ever heard of the Humanities Revolution as a source of modern economic growth.
Pete Boettke asks “My real question is why are so-called "Austrian" readers so slow to pick up on what journalists for the Boston Globe are so easily able to pick up?” He is referring to Pete Leeson’s economics of pirates research program. The larger debate relates to who are the “true” heirs to Mises and Hayek (see the comments to Pete’s post). That is, do the folks at GMU better continue the legacy of Mises and Hayek than the Mises Institute? Journalists pick up the Austrianism in Leeson’s work because he clearly recommends Mises and Hayek in the text (read chapter 8 of the book if you do not believe me). But if I were to play devil’s advocate, I would ask what in “The Invisible Hook” cannot be distilled from the writings of Mancur Olson and Avner Greif? Pirates, a relatively small group with similar preferences (self-selection was important, no?), solved a collective action problem. Similarly, self-governance is a large research area that is not the sole domain of Austrians. The specifics are what what makes the book interesting. And it is in the specific economics unerlying the stories that the Vienna lineage appears. The Austrianism is subtle but it is there. As Boettke argues and I concur, the law of association permeates "The Invisible Hook" (read this closely and then look at "The Invisible Hook"). However, I disagree with Boettke on one point. It is not obvious to me that the likelihood of social cooperation is low for pirates. In fact, I would expect it to be quite high. As the great social scientist Bob Dylan wrote in "Absolutely Sweet Marie", "But to live outside the law, you must be honest."
Paul Krugman writes
There won’t be any cooperation from Republican leaders, who have settled on a strategy of total opposition, unconstrained by facts or logic. Indeed, these leaders responded to the latest job numbers by proclaiming the failure of the Obama economic plan. That’s ludicrous, of course. The administration warned from the beginning that it would be several quarters before the plan had any major positive effects. But that didn’t stop the chairman of the Republican Study Committee from issuing a statement demanding: “Where are the jobs?”
That seems reasonable except for this graph from Mankiw:
The evidence seems to be against Krugman. The Adminstration thought there would be a lot more jobs now (about a 1% difference in the unemployment rate).
The International Monetary Fund has told Zimbabwe that it will not provide the country with more funds until its existing $1bn debts are settled.
But of course China has already loaned Mugabe some money. Story here.
Peter Klein answers in the negative and I wholeheartedly agree. Macro policy seems to be based on distributional concerns related to the next election rather than the long-run implications on future growth or the size of the deadweight loss. Does anyone think that the leaders of either party consider the aggregate welfare costs of policies before they vote? Since they rarely read the legislation, I have little doubt they have no idea what the costs are expected to be. Who knows if they read the CBO analysis when it appears rather than a one-line summary of their findings. They vote based on factors other than macro theory and evidence.
I am not surprised by this.
CHINESE mining companies have acquired 10% of Botswana’s 1101 exploration licences after holding only a handful four years ago, Johannes Tsikamo, chief geologist at the Department of Geological Surveys, said this week.
Will this have any adverse impact on governance in Botswana as it has had in places like the Sudan? I doubt it. Botswana has its problems but one is not an easy to corrupt government.
