Category: The Atlasphere

All things Atlasphere can be found here, columns, podcasts, interesting anecdotes, and more.

Greenspan on Tax Cuts

Posted on by Heather Wagenhals

Writing for WaPo, E.J. Dionne, Jr. (who speaks from the Democrat perspective) has some interesting comments on Alan Greenspan apropo tax cuts:

Leave it to Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan to stir the political pot. Theoretically above politics, Greenspan has more influence on the political class than almost any human being, presidents — perhaps — excepted. This week Greenspan did something no Democrat could do: He made Social Security an issue in the 2004 election.
Greenspan hit the front pages and the evening news broadcasts by speaking the unspeakable: Sustaining the tax cuts that President Bush has pushed through will require cuts in Social Security and other entitlement programs.
Democrats who put Social Security on the table are accused of playing politics. No one can accuse Greenspan of being a partisan Democrat. On the contrary, the Fed chairman’s worldview was influenced by the radical libertarian Ayn Rand. And his comments early in Bush’s term helped push the president’s tax cuts through. On Wednesday he told the House Budget Committee that he likes the idea of making them permanent.
Unlike most supporters of the tax cuts, however, Greenspan is willing to be honest about the high price that must be paid to save them. Making loud noises about nickel-and-dime cuts in small domestic programs is not a fiscal policy. Big tax cuts mean big cuts in programs everybody likes.

See the full article for further analysis.

Media Production Internships

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Interested in becoming involved in TV or film production? Check out the production internships offered by the Institute for Humane Studies:

Documentary / TV Investigative Journalism
Spend the summer working on a documentary at a production company or an investigative journalism television program. Gain hands-on experience, tackle an important issue, make valuable connections within the industry, and contribute to the production of a film or television program that can make a difference.
Internships are available in Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, DC, and Toronto.
Participants receive:
$2000 stipend
Housing and travel allowance
Technical and career workshops
Unique networking opportunities
Application deadline: March 15, 2004

According to the IHS internship FAQ, last year’s interns worked at:

  • Inland Sea Productions in Washington, DC working on the IMAX film We the People
  • John Stossel’s unit at ABC News in New York helping produce segments for 20/20
  • Levels Audio in Hollywood, CA doing post-production work for a variety of prime time television programs
  • Stornoway Productions in Canada conducting research for a documentary series
  • Duncan Scott Productions in Santa Monica CA helping with the new theatrical release of the Ayn Rand film classic We the Living

For more information and access to an online application form, visit the IHS internships page.

Hudgins on Special Interests

Posted on by Shawn Klein

Ed Hudgins, TOC Washington Director, decries the presidential candidates on their hypocrisy in attacking special interests. In his latest Report from the Front, Hudgins writes:

All of this wailing and gnashing of teeth over special interests evades the fundamental premise of a free society, the premise best articulated by Ayn Rand: ?There is no conflict of interests of men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices or accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.? When governments stick to their proper functions of protecting the life, liberty and property of citizens, no conflicts arise. All individuals who seek rational goals benefit by living under objective laws that preserve their rights.
Special interest groups that benefit at the expense of others are created by government when it uses force to limit the private use of property, private contracts between consenting individuals, or private behavior that does not violate the equal rights of others. In such a system, raw political power rather than production and trade become the coin of the realm. Politicians compete to see who can promise one group more of another group?s money or freedom while denouncing their victims as ?special interests.?

Read the full article…

Liberty English Camp in Lithuania

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Atlasphere member Stephen Browne forwards the following newsletter about the Liberty English Camp in Eastern Europe:

Dear Friend of Liberty,
This is just an introductory note for those of you who have expressed an interest in teaching at our next Liberty English Camp. […] Right now I?m in Wroclaw (formerly Breslau in the turbulent history of this region) in West Poland (once Eastern Germany) taking a teacher training course and have limited time and internet access.
To introduce myself; I am an American now resident in Eastern Europe. I have lived in Poland, Bulgaria, Serbia and Saudi Arabia since 1991 and work here as an English teacher, freelance writer and editor for various foundations and the Polish Academy of Science Annual Report. I also teach marital arts to a small clientele. My wife Monika is Polish and is one of the teachers at our camp. We have a son, not quite two years old now, named Jerzy Waszyngton Browne (that?s George Washington in Polish).
I conceived the idea of the English courses more than ten years ago when I had private lessons with a Polish lawyer who wanted to read Adam Smith in the original. (In the old times he defended dissidents and kids caught putting subversive stickers up in public places ? an offense that could get you seven years hard.) I warned him that the dialect was a bit archaic, he replied that it was, but that it was so much easier to understand because the argumentation was so logically laid out. I don?t even want to think about what this means about modern writing?
From this came the idea of an English course designed to teach students how to read, understand and discuss the documents important to the history of liberty in the English speaking world, in the original language. I have been working on the course material on and off for several years and include it as an attachment. It is not complete, nor am I totally happy with its present form, but this will give you an idea of what we are trying to do. And the introduction gives a quick overview of the methodology we use to get people who are not professional ESL teachers into teaching quickly.
It is our hope that as more people get involved, and perhaps more libertarians over here as full-time teachers, we will have more input into the development of liberty-oriented English teaching materials. For example, we badly need a Business English course. There is a tremendous demand here for Business English ? and everywhere I?ve been, nobody is really happy with the available courses.
The idea of a camp for teaching an intensive course was actually suggested by a young Bulgarian girl (now a professor at Cambridge University in England) who had been to a few libertarian-sponsored seminars in Eastern Europe. She remarked to me that a great many of the young participants arrived with inadequate English preparation and were simply sitting through lectures nodding politely, understanding perhaps one word in ten. She suggested that a week-long intensive course before such a seminar would help prepare them to participate more fully in the presentations and discussions.

Continue reading “Liberty English Camp in Lithuania”

'We the Living' Movie in San Francisco

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Forwarded by Duncan Scott (who was also recently interviewed by the Atlasphere on this subject)….
We the Living is opening in a few days in San Francisco’s historic Castro Theatre. You, or someone you know in Northern California, can save $5.00 on a pair of general admission tickets, but only if you act soon!
Through our website www.wethelivingmovie.com you can purchase your tickets today and get an $8.50 regular price ticket for just $5.50 (plus $1.00 for handling per order). It’s fast and easy to order online and the more tickets you order, the bigger the savings (save $11.00 on four tickets!).
Your tickets will be waiting for you at the theater’s “Will Call” desk — no need to wait on the box office line. These tickets are NOT available at the theater box office and must be ordered online before March 2, 2004. Regular priced tickets may be purchased at the theater prior to each screening.
We are pleased to make this exclusive offer by special arrangement with the Castro Theatre. Visit www.wethelivingmovie.com today to order.
Not in Northern California? Visit www.wethelivingmovie.com to see where We the Living will be playing next. Also at the website, enjoy photos from the movie, highlights of newspaper reviews, biographies of the cast and stars, and the fascinating story of the making of this classic film.

We the Living Screening Schedule
Wednesday & Thursday, March 3rd and 4th, 2004 ONLY!
Screenings at 2:00pm and 7:30pm
The Castro Theatre
429 Castro Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
Tel 415 621-2120
Discount Screening: Wednesday, March 3RD, 7:30PM ONLY

Visit www.wethelivingmovie.com for further details.

Greenspan on Sensible Economic Policy

Posted on by Heather Wagenhals

In a column for WaPo, David Ignatius discusses Alan Greenspan’s views on sensible economic policy, noting his Rand influence in the process:

It’s a delicious irony of Washington that Clinton’s heir in the trade debate is the balding, obscurantist, Ayn Rand-reading chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. He gave a speech last Friday in Omaha that should be required study for every Democrat this year. It expressed the hard fact that escapism isn’t an economic policy.
The Fed chairman began by agreeing with the trade-worriers that intense global competition has brought stress and anxiety. “There is a palpable unease that businesses and jobs are being drained from the United States, with potentially adverse long-run implications for unemployment and the standard of living of the average American,” he said.
Greenspan went on to summarize some of the growth statistics that make economists so confident that the long-term benefits of free trade and open markets outweigh the short-term costs. But he counseled workers that they must have the skills to compete. “By far, the greatest contribution during the past half-century to our average annual real GDP growth of three-quarter percent has been the ideas embodied in both our human and physical capital.” And he warned that if workers don’t get the skills required by a changing economy, the result will be growing inequality of incomes.
Greenspan’s gospel is simple, and backed by hard numbers: “Over the long sweep of American generations and waves of economic change we simply have not experienced a net drain of jobs to advancing technology or to other nations.” That was Clinton’s faith, too, and it gave him the discipline to resist politically popular policies that would have undermined economic growth.
Democrats are right to challenge the poor economic record of the Bush administration, which has squandered many of the gains of the 1990s. But they should base their critique on sound economics and honest advice to America’s working people — not on the false hope that the United States can somehow opt out of a world that is growing more competitive by the day.

See the full article for more details.

Capitalism: The Cure for Education Failures

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

In a review of Education and Capitalism: How Overcoming Our Fear of Markets and Economics Can Improve America’s Schools (Hoover Press, 362 pages, $15) for the Chicago Sun-Times, Jonathan Hoenig writes:

[Authors Herbert Walberg and Joseph Bast] present a compelling and thoroughly researched argument for introducing market-based reforms into public schools.
The vast majority of children in the United States attend public schools, and in a methodic and disciplined fashion, the authors make a comprehensive case why the free market can better educate more students at a lower cost.
The authors begin by describing the horrible condition of public education, which, make no mistake, is a complete mess nationwide. Although government schools maintain a monopoly on public funds, they’ve failed miserably by almost every conceivable benchmark.
Even more depressing is that even as results have dropped, the size and cost of the government school bureaucracy has soared.

The solution?

The solution is capitalism, the same incredible force of productive change that brought civilization out of the Dark Ages and propelled this country to the highest standard of living, for rich and poor alike, in all of human history.
The authors’ thesis, built on the groundwork laid by the University of Chicago’s Milton Friedman, is that just as the free market has created unparalleled innovation in medicine, agriculture and communication, so could it vastly improve education. The ability for parents to choose their schools, and for schools to compete for their attendance, would raise standards and lower cost, just as it has in every other area of our lives.

Walberg and Bast devote a good deal of space to refuting common misconceptions and criticisms of capitalism, and describe how a free market in education might work. But they go beyond that:

[I]n the tradition of economist Ludwig von Mises and philosopher Ayn Rand, they ground their arguments in moral as well as practical terms. Capitalism isn’t simply the most efficient social system ever devised, but the most just as well.

Read the full article for more details!

In Praise of Wal-Mart

Posted on by Heather Wagenhals

ARI op-ed columnist (and industrial psychologist) Ed Locke has written an editorial in defense of Wal-Mart stores:

Wal-Mart is one of the most impressive success stories in the history of business.
Founded some 50 years ago as a single five and dime store in a small Arkansas town, it has grown into a world-wide behemoth under the leadership of its brilliant founder, the late Sam Walton, and his able successors.
It is the largest corporation in America in terms of sales, $245 billion. Wal-Mart has over 4,000 stores worldwide, employs 1.3 million people, and serves 100 million customers per week.
It is quite true that Wal-Mart has been successful in outcompeting other stores which sell the same products, such as toys, clothing, and groceries.
But how has it been able to do this? By discovering new ways of using computer systems and other technology to better manage its inventory and costs and reap the benefits of economy of scale.

Read the full article.

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