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Ann Coulter, recently published If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans , and as is typical, she continues her vitriolic blather. A Republican site, using the General Social Survey, thought it had proven the idea that liberals were less intelligent, using the verbal test from the survey, and on average, this might be true. But then, the author looked further. The test is divided into three (3) score groups, high, medium and low, and the results showed that Democrats are dominant in the high and low scorers - this is similar to the dichotomy of voting preferences, where cities composed of the educated and poor are Democrat, and suburban/rural voters are Republican. Aside from party affiliation liberals dominate the high scores, while middle of the road and conservative voters dominate the other, lower-scoring groups. Among the intelligent, Republicans are usually the least represented. The group with the largest representation in the high verbal scorers are Independen...

When I started learning economics and finance I soaked up the right-wing slant of The Economist. The magazine often exposed me to material of a more intellectual and academic nature, and its writers and editors wrote about market concepts without realizing that their presented material contradicted their dogma. I later went on to B-school, as student with 720 GMAT's and a 3.9 GPA, was a student member of the International Economics Honor Society, and I 'aced' the economic and finance courses; my understanding of economics is at least as good as the educated populace. Essentially, many economic aspects decried as socialism help the modern developed countries function and function better, i.e., big government, social security, universal healthcare, progressive taxation, financial regulation, income equality (low GINI coefficient), worker involvement/reward from production. My own private research - I was interested in publishing, and one idea was the relationship between econ...

For the past several years I've been telling myself the following: What's good for corporations is bad for people. A bit oversimplified, but true. There is no illusion as to what benefits from laws regarding sick leave, health care, etc. It is the corporations that hire people. The idea that what is good for the economy is good for people is rarely true, and although the goals can seem related, they are only positively related by the rate of productivity growth, rather than productivity itself. Also, the wealth of middle class America comes at the expense of the wealthy - a historical analysis from Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Philips, although the 90's would seem to belie this truth - so the recent cuts in capital gains and corporate taxes, combined with lax IRS oversight and CEO greed, have created a new gilded-age economic divide. Part of the way the US can become better for the middle and lower classes is by empowering unions and taxing the wealthy, along with creating...

A response to the Lancet article estimating Iraqi deaths caused by the occupation: Wars tend to redistribute income, such that profiteers make huge sums of money, and this war is no different, except that more of the populous realizes that this war is mass murder for profit. Most Americans believe they vote on values, but they are deluded, conservatives anyway, if they think they are voting for much more than corporate welfare and plutocracy, a new military-industrial-complex, although the principals now include hedge funds and security firms.

There is an unquestioned belief that charity s good, so while America as a whole gives away enormous amounts of money, it is also one of the most grotesquely unequal, with a significant portion of its population living in poverty, and with the worst social outcomes in the developed world. My belief is that charity is linked hand-in-hand with the grotesque inequities of our current political/economic system. The solution to our current set of social ills would be a responsive government, one that fostered the welfare of its citizens, not just its corporations. It's absurd to think that giving to most charities will change much of anything.

Who needs a god? Like Einstein, I became an atheist at 12, and although much of my criticism was directed at the Catholic Church, any major religion would have worked. My biggest criticisms focused on the hypocrisy and irrationality of belief systems, e.g., moral absolutism, "my god is the only god," the suppression of science, the practice of celibacy, the promotion of poverty, etc. My belief system, as some people assume it, trusts science - I am not faith-oriented and am anti-dogmatic - and my 'philosophy' is commonly termed secular humanism. As a belief system, Wikipedia defines it as follows: Secular humanism is a humanist philosophy that upholds reason, ethics, and justice, and specifically rejects the supernatural and the spiritual as warrants of moral reflection and decision-making. Like other types of humanism, secular humanism is a life stance or a praxis focusing on the way human beings can lead good and happy lives (eupraxsophy).  As for myself, my concern...

Some time ago, I did my own research on America, to see where it is the best, first, most, etc. I didn't find anything positive to report: Essentially America leads the world in expenditures and revenues for the military, and in many facets of business/economic affairs. It also has the highest percentage of its population imprisoned, and performs the most amputations.  The US ranks miserably on measures of social welfare education, health, work hours, obesity, and poverty. Oddly, a majority of Americans believe this country is great or best, according to a poll last year. American's have little idea of what the rest of the developed world is like...