In my latest National Post column I say we can’t rationally decide whether we want “strong” mayors for our cities until we decide what mayors are for, and what they are.
“Few are presumptuous enough to dispute with a chemist or mathematician upon points connected with the studies of labour of his life. But almost any man who can read and write feels at liberty to form and maintain opinions of his own upon trade and money …. The economic literature of every succeeding year embraces works conceived in the true scientific spirit, and works exhibiting the most vulgar ignorance of economic history and the most flagrant contempt for the conditions of economic investigation. It is much as if astrology were being pursued side by side with astronomy or alchemy with chemistry.”
Gen. Francis A. Walker, a professor at Yale and later president of M.I.T., quoted by Milton Friedman in CATO Policy Report Vol. XXI No. 2; another source on which my notes are culpably incomplete calls him “probably the most famous American economist of the nineteenth century” and director of two national censuses, which latter claim Wikipedia confirms, adding that he was wounded at Chancellorsville, fought in other battles, became a POW, was made a brevet brigadier general at age 24, and went on to a series of other achievements that make one wonder what one has done with one’s own life.
“What next? Economists divided on the future”
Subject line of an MSNBC teaser email whose body said “If you're confused about the outlook for the economy and stocks one year after the market hit bottom, then you've got good company — the Wall Street economists and strategists who are supposed to have this all figured out.” (The actual date, if you care, was March 7, 2010 but just as some words of wisdom are eternal, so are some fatuities.)
In my latest Epoch Times column I say it’s predictable that the latest expensive troubles for Ottawa’s megaproject O-Train weren’t predicted.
“The [tsetse] fly’s devastating effects are similar to those of other known sleeping-sickness carriers, such as the tsetse professor, tsetse boss, and tsetse New York Times op-ed page writer.”
P.J. O’Rourke Eat the Rich
“Robert Reich, President Clinton’s labour secretary, said that economists who question free market theories really ‘want to speak to the reality of our time.’ That’s incredible. Reality doesn’t depend on whether it’s 1907 or 2007. Reich probably thinks the reality of the laws of supply and demand depends on what year it is. I wonder whether he thinks the reality of the laws of gravity does as well.”
Walter E. Williams in Fraser Forum July-August 2007
“Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail. Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.”
Milton and Rose Friedman Free to Choose quoted by Eustace Davie, Director, Free Market Foundation, South Africa, in Fraser Forum July-August 2007
“You don’t have to be cruel to be tough.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, quoted as standalone “WORDS OF WISDOM” in Epoch Times email February 4, 2022