Tag: Public policy

The Washington Post Editorial Board praises the “good faith” compromise of the Obama administration on contraception and health-care, which was elaborated on this past Friday:

Adam Smith’s general cynicism about the tendency of any group of business people, when meeting together, to create a cartel and ensure maximum profitability, has been shown to be justified, both in its own terms and as a general reflection (which he understood well) of the susceptibility of human-made systems to human failings.

A new study says that the overweight live longer. Economists say that may be true, but the overweight have higher health costs.

Couple of blog posts on God in schools: Cafe News Blogger Kurt Wiesner responds to calls to “Put God back in schools.” Part of it

In the high crime Chicago neighborhood studied, social distance to a homicide victim is negatively and strongly associated with individual victimization: each social tie removed from a homicide victim decreases one’s odds of being a homicide victim by approximately 57 percent.

“When Meyer and Sullivan looked at poorer families’ consumption rather than income, accounted for changes in the tax code that benefit the poor, and included “noncash benefits” such as food stamps and government-provided medical care, they found poverty fell 12.5 percentage points between 1972 and 2010.” I come away wondering if when you put it all together the Great Society has failed because it has failed to be transformative: just as many people are unable to earn a good income and support themselves.

During last week there were a number of news stories about Roman Catholic organizations, with strong support by right-wing evangelicals, filing lawsuits against the new