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Kansas school test scores
Read more: Kansas school test scoresKansas scores on the nationwide NAEP tests are unchanged or falling at the same time scores on Kansas tests are rising — “jumping,” in the recent words of Kansas Education Commissioner Diane DeBacker.
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Classical liberalism: Liberty, individualism, and civil society
Read more: Classical liberalism: Liberty, individualism, and civil societyIn a short video, Nigel Ashford of Institute for Humane Studies explains the tenets of classical liberalism.
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Myth: Markets lead to disastrous economic cycles, such as the Great Depression
Read more: Myth: Markets lead to disastrous economic cycles, such as the Great DepressionMarkets provide mechanisms for adjusting levels of investment and preventing booms and busts in the business cycle. Government policies, however, often distort markets and nurture the conditions that lead to depressions and human suffering.
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Myth: Markets don’t work in developing countries
Read more: Myth: Markets don’t work in developing countriesWhat needs explanation is not poverty, which is the natural state of mankind, but wealth. No system better than the free market, based on well defined and legally secure property rights and legal institutions to facilitate exchange, has ever been discovered for generating incentives for wealth creation.
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Walter Williams on government in a free society
Read more: Walter Williams on government in a free societyEconomist Walter E. Williams spoke on the legitimate role of government in a free society, touching on the role of government as defined in the Constitution, the benefits of capitalism and private property, and the recent attacks on individual freedom and limited government.
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Three years, no budget
Read more: Three years, no budgetThe U.S. Senate hasn’t passed a budget for three years.
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Wichita to hold public hearing, again
Read more: Wichita to hold public hearing, againThe City of Wichita must conduct a public hearing for a second time, another example of a long line of mistakes made by the city in the administration of its policies.
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Myth: The more complex a social order is, the less it can rely on markets and the more it needs government direction
Read more: Myth: The more complex a social order is, the less it can rely on markets and the more it needs government directionAs society becomes more complex, reliance on voluntary market exchange becomes more — not less — important. A complex social order requires the coordination of more information than any mind or group of minds could master.
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Kansas state spending is not, itself, a good
Read more: Kansas state spending is not, itself, a goodIn the debate over reducing and eventually eliminating the income tax in Kansas, those who oppose income tax reduction say it will simply shift the burden of taxation to others, in the form of sales and property taxes. This is true only if we decide to keep spending at the same rate. We could cut…
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Myth: Markets don’t work (or are inefficient) when there are negative or positive externalities
Read more: Myth: Markets don’t work (or are inefficient) when there are negative or positive externalitiesNegative externalities such as air and water pollution are not a sign of market failure, but of government’s failure to define and defend the property rights on which markets rest.
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Tax costs block progress in Kansas
Read more: Tax costs block progress in KansasIf we in Kansas and Wichita wonder why our economic growth is slow and our economic development programs don’t seem to be producing results, there is now data to answer the question why: Our tax costs are high — way too high.
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Myth: Markets cannot possibly produce public (collective) goods
Read more: Myth: Markets cannot possibly produce public (collective) goodsThe public goods justification for the state is one of the most commonly misapplied of economic arguments. But many goods that are allegedly impossible to provide through markets have been, or are at present, provided through market mechanisms — from lighthouses to education to policing to transportation, which suggests that the common invocation of alleged…