Richard J Grant

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, June 26, 2011 by Richard J. Grant One evening some years ago, I went to a restaurant with a famous actor. As we entered, and were about to pass the crowded bar, he turned to me and said, “Watch this, I can be anybody I want to be.” I am reminded of this when observing how politicians can make Social Security appear to be anything they want it to be. When seeking support for the program, they tout it as a freestanding, self-financing, off-budget pension program. But when they need to use the Social Security “surplus” to reduce the federal government's budget deficits, it has been convenient to include the program within the total budget. When the original law passed in 1935, Social Security was presented in different ways to different audiences. It is a myth that there was public demand at the time for a compulsory, government-run, old-age pension program. Public opinion at the time was not much different with regard to Social Security than it w...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, June 19, 2011 by Richard J. Grant Is the economy made of glass? We keep hearing how “fragile” it is. There has long been a tendency to think of the economy as an almost physical, machine-like entity. We still sometimes hear economists refer to “pump priming,” as if the government is needed to inject the initial income into the system to get it flowing. Or perhaps they see the economy as some kind of an organism that just can't rouse itself without some centrally directed “stimulus.” We think of a machine as needing some kind of control panel or driver's seat. If it is an organism, then we want to put it on a leash. Someone must control it and direct it. Such a vision of the world either ignores or downplays the role of real, autonomous people. Never mind that the real-world economy is an ever-changing network of a multitude of individuals, each seeking their own purposes. Never mind that these individuals will tend to prosper when they coop...

A shortened version was published in The Tennessean , Sunday, June 12, 2011 by Richard J. Grant Whenever a president or governor announces that he is going to focus on “creating jobs,” we have reason to worry. Our state and federal governments have grown way beyond the size where any additional government job is likely to contribute more to society than it costs. It is not an insult to President Barack Obama to say that he cannot create jobs. He can't and we shouldn't expect him to. He can, however, “make work.” Unfortunately, that is what he has done by driving up regulatory and tax-compliance costs, and creating much uncertainty about future policy. That is why the unemployment rate has remained so high for so long and has risen in the past two months to 9.1 percent. The political need for government office-holders to seem important to voters is sufficient to explain the growth of government intervention. An ideological bent toward bigger government simply makes this worse. W...

A shortened version was published in The Tennessean , Sunday, June 5, 2011 by Richard J. Grant A thousand years ago, Mongol invaders displaced the Song Dynasty, which shifted toward the south coast of China. This brought a new commercial and strategic interest in the development of sea travel. By 1132, the Emperor had established a permanent navy and devoted resources to maritime engineering. Knowledge grew, as did the number and sizes of the increasingly sophisticated sailing vessels. By the 15th century, Chinese traders and the navy operated huge fleets of several hundred ocean-going vessels. But with the Ming Dynasty, which began around 1368, the traditionalist, Confucian bureaucracy grew in power and influence. After the death of the adventurous Emperor Zhu Di in 1424, the Chinese became increasingly bureaucratized and inward looking. The maritime expeditions by the great fleets soon came to an end. An imperial decree restricted Chinese ships to coastal waters and individuals were ...