Monday Quick Hits

The eastern seaboard is clearly under attack from global cooling.  Here are some interesting links to get you through these dark and cold "spring" days.

• Chevy Volt: the car from Atlas Shrugged Motors.

• Sore losers implore the US to take their ball and go home.  I like to call this the "Cartman strategy."

• New 2004 UCLA study: FDR's statist policies prolonged the Great Depression by seven(!) years.

• Sarah Palin advocates import liberalization in India, further solidifying her free trade bona fides: "[I]n the early 1990′s, due to clear, commonsense, pro free-market reforms, India’s economy took off! [It] abolished import licenses; cut import duties; removed investment caps & broke the union’s grip on industry."

• The United States has the most progressive tax system in the industrialized world.  Key graf: "[T]he top 10 percent of households in the U.S. pays 45.1 percent of all income taxes (both personal income and payroll taxes combined) in the country. Italy is the only other country in which the top 10 percent of households pays more than 40 percent of the income tax burden (42.2%). Meanwhile, the average tax burden for the top decile of households in OECD countries is 31.6 percent."

• A fascinating study (and a related WSJ op-ed) from the UK think tank Policy Exchange on the impact of global trade on the effectiveness (or, more accurately, the impotence) of the EU's climate change regulations has me wondering whether our policymakers will (i) learn the right lesson from the EU's experience - and the one advocated by Policy Exchange ("to accelerate the development of technologies that will be genuinely competitive with fossil fuels" rather than "browbeat[ing] developing countries into going green") or (ii) use the study to justify their calls for eco-protectionism.  I'm hoping the former but cynically expecting the latter.

• US steelmaking giant Nucor recently broke ground on a new iron making facility in Louisiana that would employ hundreds.  The same site is also permitted for another iron facility, and many are guessing that a steel mill will also show up down there in the next few years.  Oddly, ABC News isn't doing a week's worth of news stories on the Nucor plant(s) or any of the many other industrial expansion efforts across the country.

• Why won't Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) debate GMU's Don Boudreaux on the merits of free trade?  (Yes, that's a rhetorical question.  *cluck cluck*)

• Cato's Dan Griswold points out that the easiest way to decrease American income inequality appears to be destroying the US economy.  (Obvious response: Shh, dude, don't give anyone any bright ideas.)

• So much for the silly myth of "McJobs" in the service industry.  According to this handy primer from the National Retail Federation, the import-dependent retail industry in 2009 employed 330,000 managers who earned an average annual salary of $91,650.  And there are another 300,000 or so well-paid folks in other positions.  (This isn't new, but it's worth mentioning here anyway.)

• Finally, Jonah Goldberg at AEI points us to an awesome video from Hans Rosling about the amazing improvements in global wealth and health over the last few decades.  All of it is cool and worth watching, but for our purposes, the most relevant point is around the 10:00 mark when Rosling unequivocally credits the dramatic, disproportionate (relative to other African nations) improvement of Mauritius on the country's embrace of free trade.

 Enjoy!

Wednesday Quick Hits

It's been a while since I've provided the quick hits, so this will be a table-clearing of sorts.  Enjoy:

• Sarah Palin, Free Trader.  Maybe the fact that the Guv mentioned free trade not once, but twice(!), in her "open letter to GOP freshmen" will calm some of those silly fears out there that the Tea Party's packed with raving protectionists destined to turn Republicans against trade altogether. 

• Google, Free Trader.  Alternate headline: Google fires back at China; It's, Like, So On.

• India, Currency Dove.  Great FT op-ed here about how India has thus far refused to fall into the currency abyss (and, by the way, still runs a bilateral trade surplus with the United States even as the Rupee appreciates against the Dollar).

• GM, Fake "Success."  Everyone wants to talk about how super-awesome the GM bailout turned out.  Except that it didn't.  At all.

• US, Mexico Inaugurate New Freight Crossing. Too bad that Mexican trucks are still banned from using it, and that US exporters are paying needless Mexican tariffs.  But other than that, congrats, guys!

• WTO: Cutting Red Tape Through Trade Facilitation Could Save a Fortune.  Pretty interesting stuff out of Geneva, but you already knew this because you read my blog religiously, right?  Right?

• BMW Hires 1000 Americans to Make Cars in America.  So should we start complaining about a "race to the bottom" and demanding that folks "buy American" now, or should we wait until these good folks have found other employment with "real American" companies? (<-- obvious sarcasm)

That's all for tonight, folks. 

Sarah Palin Is the Howard Stern of Politics

If you had any lingering doubts about the interplanetary force that is Sarah Palin, the following information should end them. According to Google, Sarah Palin's last name was searched more over the last week than the last names of President Obama, VP Biden, former GOP nominee John McCain, and current GOP 2012 front-runner Mike Huckabee.

Combined.

Of course, not all of these searches are by Palin supporters. Indeed, according to recent polls, Palin's hated nearly as much as she's loved. But the search levels do show public interest and the intensity of that interest. And it is high. Very, very high.

It reminds me of a classic exchange from Howard Stern's movie, Private Parts:

Researcher: The average radio listener listens for eighteen minutes. The average Howard Stern fan listens for - are you ready for this? - an hour and twenty minutes.
Pig Vomit: How can that be?
Researcher: Answer most commonly given? "I want to see what he'll say next."
Pig Vomit: Okay, fine. But what about the people who hate Stern?
Researcher: Good point. The average Stern hater listens for two and a half hours a day.
Pig Vomit: But... if they hate him, why do they listen?
Researcher: Most common answer? "I want to see what he'll say next."

It appears that, love her or hate her, people - including the media - are desperate to see what Sarah does next. It remains to be seen whether that power turns out to be a good thing for the GOP.