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Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How conservatives are reacting to news that Harvard could start a conservative think tank
News that Harvard University is considering starting a conservative think tank is being met with skepticism and derision by conservatives who see the idea as a public relations ploy as the school seeks to retain federal funding threatened by the Trump administration. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Harvard leadership had been in touch with potential donors for a center that could be similar to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, home to conservative luminaries like Condoleezza Rice, Niall Ferguson, Thomas Sowell and Victor Davis Hanson. According to the Journal, a Harvard spokesman said the center would be nonpartisan and 'promote and support viewpoint diversity.' The cost of creating the center was estimated at between $500 million and $1 billion. The report comes as Harvard President Alan Garber seeks to stand up to the Trump administration while acknowledging that the nation's oldest university has lacked ideological diversity in the past and is weighing how to best correct that. A Harvard task force said in a report issued in 2018 that the school needed to make changes to be more inclusive with regard to religious and political beliefs. Danielle Allen, co-chair of that task force, later wrote for The Washington Post that those aspects of the report had been largely overlooked, and that 'We have been focused so much on academic freedom and free speech that we have neglected to set standards for a culture of mutual respect.' The Trump administration wants Harvard to have more conservatives on its campus, both faculty and students. It has frozen funding, threatened the school's tax-exempt status and accreditation, and wants to stop international students from enrolling. Harvard sued the administration in April, claiming its constitutional rights were being violated. 'No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue," Garber has said. In recent weeks, Trump has said that a deal with Harvard was imminent, but nothing has emerged, and someone 'familiar with the administration's views' told the Journal that the creation of a conservative thinktank would be seen as 'window-dressing' and not satisfy Trump's concerns. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said Tuesday that a deal is 'getting close' — as is the court hearing, which is scheduled for July 21. But the Journal, citing unnamed sources, said that negotiations were hindered by 'repeated snags.' 'Decision-making around admissions and faculty have been points of tension, with Harvard resistant to ceding authority on which types of students it admits, the faculty it hires and what professors teach, according to people briefed on the discussions.' University of Pennsylvania professor Jennifer M. Morton, writing for The New York Times, argued that seeking out professors and students with conservative views would backfire, saying they would be less likely to engage in open-minded intellectual pursuit. 'Students admitted to help restore ideological balance would likely feel a responsibility to defend certain views, regardless of the force of opposing arguments they might encounter,' Morton wrote. For professors, she added, 'the pressure to maintain those views would be even greater' because 'your salary, health insurance and career prospects would all depend upon the inflexibility of your ideology.' Responding to Morton's essay on social media, Princeton professor Robert P. George said that a course correction wouldn't require hiring professors because they are conservatives, but simply acknowledging and ending bias against conservatives in the hiring process. 'I don't see how any contemporary academic can, with a straight face, deny that these two species of bias are largely responsible for the stunning — nearly unbelievable — ideological imbalances on college and university campuses," George wrote. An oft-cited poll by the student-run Harvard Crimson found that only about 3% of faculty considered themselves conservative or very conservative while about 77% said they were liberal or very liberal. On 'The Big Money Show on Fox,' Brian Brenberg, a Harvard alumnus, called the idea of a conservative think tank a bone thrown to conservatives. 'When you need something like this, what it tells you is the problem people have accused you of is true. You should never need a center like this, because the definition of scholarship is looking at issues from every single side.' On X, Matthew E. Kahn, an economics professor at the University of California and a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, called the idea 'promising' but said the Harvard Kennedy School should have done this decades ago. And Hoover's Niall Ferguson said that such a venture 'would have no credibility whatsoever' because of the circumstances under which it was created.
Forbes
08-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Should You Invest In Bitcoin, ETFs, Or Bitcoin Treasury Companies?
Bitcoin investors have a variety of options for gaining exposure. There Are No Solutions, Only Trade-Offs' - Thomas Sowell After many years of regulatory resistance to Bitcoin, the asset has now gained approval to enter into mainstream capital markets. Starting with the approval of spot BTC ETFs to trade on January 11, 2024, various legal wrappers for BTC exposure have emerged. Recently, a notable trend has emerged as public companies add BTC to their balance sheets. Many investors likely wonder how to get best involved with this complex set of options. There are no black-and-white answers to this, only trade-offs. In this article, we will break down the pros and cons of each. Real BTC Owning actual Bitcoin, held in a personally controlled wallet of your own custody, is the original form of owning Bitcoin. Much like owning a bar of gold in your house, this offers complete control over the asset. This was the original intent of Bitcoin, an asset independent of government control or centralized authority. If custodied properly, it can not be seized or hacked or, potentially, even known that you own it. Self-custody offers a double-edged sword for many. Properly custodying Bitcoin in cold storage can result in a complete loss of your investment if not done carefully. First, the private key can be lost and unrecoverable. This famously occurred to James Howells, who accidentally disposed of the private key to access 8000 BTC, worth over $850MM today. There is no back-up for self-custody. Just as if you lost a bar of gold, it can be lost forever with no recourse. With great power comes great responsibility. In addition, ease of access to cold storage Bitcoin means that transacting may be slow. The process of accessing, transferring, or selling Bitcoin can take hours or days, which may pose a problem for some. There are alternatives to this, but they essentially remove the benefit of owning BTC directly. This includes keeping your Bitcoin on an exchange, storing your private keys in a bank or with a lawyer, or using a private key device like a Ledger to store them. This decreases the odds of you losing your Bitcoin; it also removes the self-sovereign properties that make owning Bitcoin attractive and unique. You have to trust some other party or company to keep you secure. ETFs Bitcoin ETFs are legal wrappers that allow people to gain exposure to the price of Bitcoin. They create a legal entity that holds the Bitcoin in custody on your behalf. The ETFs are regulated by the SEC and must abide by strict compliance, reporting, and security standards to be approved. This allows regular investors to make an investment in Bitcoin without having to deal with the technological peculiarities the asset poses. These ETFs are trading on major stock exchanges and can also be accessed by retirement accounts and large financial institutions that must abide by strict investment and regulatory policies. Though ETFs simplify ownership, they also neuter much of the unique protections Bitcoin can provide. You are depending on a large set of human beings to protect you. This includes the ETF creator, a firm like BlackRock or Fidelity, for example, the custodian, which is almost always Coinbase, the regulators, and market-making firms. Though all of these groups are regulated and legitimate, their incentives are not exactly aligned with every individual who wants to own bitcoin. Changes to policy, technical errors, hacks, and fraud can all arise when so many counterparties get involved. BTC Treasury Companies The latest wave of BTC exposure has come in the form of so-called Bitcoin Treasury Companies. These are public companies that hold Bitcoin rather than only USD. These vehicles offer many of the regulated protections and mainstream accessibility of an ETF and can be traded on exchanges, but add a variety of strategies and financial engineering approaches to aim to generate greater returns. These approaches can vary widely depending on the company. It can include selling more shares of stock into the market to raise more money, selling convertible debt, offering exposure across different jurisdictions in order to tap into untouched markets, trading the bitcoin using derivatives, taking out loans with the bitcoin to buy more bitcoin, and much more. For some jurisdictions, no ETF exists, and so a simple company that just buys and holds Bitcoin for shareholders may be the best option available. All of this adds another layer of human involvement to the risk of the investment. It can also mean much greater upside if chosen properly. Some of these companies trade at 10 times the value of the actual Bitcoin they hold. Though investors may be able to make more upside with BTC treasury companies, gaining exposure to intelligent strategies and retail buying momentum, they also have more risk. The same factors that can create outsized gains can create outsized losses. These are very sophisticated financial products that leverage aspects of retail speculation, debt instruments, marketing, and legal and jurisdictional arbitrage to, hopefully, outperform Bitcoin. Some of these strategies suffer from black swan-type risk, in which they will look to be doing very well until they suddenly fail. Others will be successful far out into the future. One important aspect to consider with BTC Treasury Companies is whether they are pure-play Bitcoin holding companies or does the Bitcoin complement other business activity and income. Companies that have real income may be better positioned in the long run for stability and risk management during times when the price of BTC falters, since they have other ways to pay bills and stay in business. Companies that are pure-play vehicles may have greater upside and volatility. In the end, all of these vehicles can make sense for different types of investors, from long-term individual holders to pension funds to day traders. It's important to truly understand what the company does to generate a return for you so that you can evaluate risk with a clear perspective.
Fox News
02-07-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Politicians push job-killing minimum wage hikes while ignoring the devastating economic reality
Despite it being widely known by anyone who can think two steps ahead that price controls have negative consequences, politicians can't help but continue to promote price controls as policy. With Americans facing increased costs of living, there has been a return to calling for minimum wage hikes from democratic socialists like New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who wants to raise the minimum wage in the city to $30/hour, to Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who is bafflingly pushing an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15/hour with additional increases indexed to inflation. If wages could be raised by mandate without negative consequences, why would we stop there? Why not make the minimum wage $100/hour, $100,000/hour or even a cool $1 million/hour? Because in real life, that's not the way things work. The minimum wage has always been an evil policy, rooted in racism. It was passed as legislation precisely to exclude unskilled workers, particularly immigrants, minorities and women, from the workforce. It has the same effect today. But the financially illiterate don't seem to understand basic economics. The minimum wage is not an average wage, median wage, maximum wage or even an expected wage. It is quite literally a floor (although, as economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, the real minimum wage is zero). As reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ("BLS") via FRED, only 1% of workers report being paid at or below the federal minimum wage, and that data is "based solely on the hourly wage they report (which does not include overtime pay, tips or commissions)." The minimum wage is heavily slanted toward teens and workers entering the workforce with few skills. As the BLS noted, "Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they accounted for 43% of those paid the federal minimum wage or less." While minimum wage directly impacts a small number of individuals, its effects ripple throughout the economy at large. If teens and unskilled workers have a guaranteed wage floor, those with skills and experience will want to be compensated even more. That increases both wages and taxes paid for a business throughout their labor force, as well as that of all their suppliers, adding substantially to operating costs and reducing what may already be slim operating margins. The businesses will either have to make less money or pass on costs to consumers – or both. This makes products and services more expensive and, in many cases, will put businesses out of business across the economy as every company now competes in a market where nonskilled workers have a high fixed cost set by government. Sometimes, businesses will also reduce product sizes or service offerings – shrinkflation, as we saw under the last administration – but one way or another, that increase in labor cost flows through the economy and impacts what you are able to get for your dollars. It's notable that small business owners, who often work well in excess of 40 hours of week and risk their own capital, don't get a guaranteed wage, but politicians are happy to make entrepreneurial efforts more risky and costly. The minimum wage, particularly the federal proposals, don't take into account different economic costs by region or geographic area, either. Just because bad policy exists doesn't mean that we should keep doubling down on it. Pay should be negotiated between parties based on value and demand for skills and services. An economy cannot function without being able to get people into the workforce and trained. We need to keep jobs where people can enter the workforce, learn skills and, if desired, move on in their career paths. At a time when AI is threatening jobs, and technology is replacing workers, enacting legislation that incentivizes fewer jobs and makes it more costly and difficult to run a business is patently insane. Wages will naturally shift with the market for labor, as we have seen in recent years. Politicians who are trying to "help" will once again find that intentions do not equate to outcomes, and their policies only make the cost-of-living issues worse. If they want to help in a way that drives positive outcomes, make it cheaper and easier to do business by removing costly regulatory barriers and red tape. That is the path to a flourishing economy and better cost of living, not mandated wages.
The Hindu
14-06-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
The bane of built-in obsolescence
From apps to gadgets, clothing to furniture, and kitchen utensils to cosmetics, all things are getting outdated faster than ever. A linear economy driven by consumerism makes almost everything useless after some time. We need to constantly upgrade our stuff to catch up with time. If we decide not to go with the flow, we are not only left out but also judged as not 'cool'. Corporations are making huge profits whereas the middle class is suffering a serious decline in savings rate due to this, probably. Things have lost intrinsic value. The only way we associate with our products is based on their extrinsic value. We dump them as soon as they are outdated and longevity is not even a virtue any more. High-end customers want exclusivity and low-end customers want features. Exclusivity is breached by the updated version of the product hitting the market even with nominal upgrades. Features are hampered by the way things are designed. The height of commodity fetishism is that some people are closer to the market than they are to the people around them. They say that change is the law of nature but this change is nominal and not real. I call it 'treadmill motion' when we run a lot but reach nowhere. Everything is changing yet nothing is changing. Humans have advanced so far yet the suffering remains intact. Poverty, health issues, social tensions, sorrow, still exist. We solve one problem and in the process, we create new ones. In the words of Thomas Sowell, 'Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today's problems are a result of yesterday's solutions.' Linear economy takes a toll on the environment in which we manufacture a product and discard it. Consumerism ensures that the manufactured product becomes waste soon. Therefore, a circular economy cannot be achieved until we put an end to consumerism. Sustainable Development Goal 12 talks about responsible consumption and production, which requires waste management and waste reduction as well. The European Union has come up with policies to increase the longevity of the products within the ambit of the 'right to repair'. These measures include providing parts and servicing to the customers at reasonable prices even after the warranty period. India also needs to chalk out a National Action Plan for sustainable consumption and production just like many countries have done. This would help in reducing the overall ecological footprint. We need to adopt behavioural changes in our lifestyles. We must actively appreciate people who try to use a product for a longer period. Companies indulging in marketing strategies to promote mindless consumption need to introspect how they can build sustainable supply chains with a lesser ecological footprint. A lot of research must be conducted to achieve such product designs that last longer. Business models must adapt to the ways of providing maximum value to the stakeholders with minimum resources. The initiative starts with us not defining our lifestyles in terms of ephemeral products. We must learn to satisfy our wants with optimum resources at hand. This requires active engagement with the market trends and awareness about sustainability issues. Our consciousness will also lead to a larger change in the ways corporations and governments operate. emailtoaakashbajpai@
Irish Independent
10-06-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
The Irish Independent's View: Government must wake up to state watchdog's spending warning
These are the words of American economic historian Thomas Sowell. It might seem as if our Government has gone to some lengths to prove him right on both counts in the eyes of the Fiscal Advisory Council (FAC). The state watchdog is concerned that spending is up almost 6pc already this year. 'At the current pace of growth, overruns of €2bn are likely,' the Fiscal Assessment Report says. The extravagance can once again be traced back to bumper corporation tax receipts. As we know, the incoming billions are the envy of many European leaders; and a source of considerable indignation to Donald Trump. The US president has made it plain that though he 'likes' us, we are causing him a world of pain when he sees what he regards as 'US tax dollars' flowing out of American coffers and into those of the Emerald Isle. He has warned he is 'coming for them' and we have no reason to doubt him. The FAC has been warning for the past few years that over-reliance on such golden windfalls could leave the State dangerously exposed when they come to an end, as they inevitably will. Today's warning is even more shrill. It notes that while phenomenal levels of excess corporation tax are keeping Ireland in surplus, 'without these revenues, there would be a substantial deficit, despite a strong economy'. The report acknowledges that while the tide of good fortune could persist for a while yet, it will turn, so depending on it is 'high risk'. It also notes how just three companies account for most of the excess corporation tax. A particular worry of the council is that the over-runs are not being acknowledged in new forecasts. Every blessing ignored becomes a curse Its chairperson, Seamus Coffey, even raised a concern about the 'plausibility' of the numbers being presented. He said it's hard to know precisely how overstretched government departments are, because monthly figures are not supplied. The projected figures for 2025 expenditure remain unchanged, even though it is likely to rise by €3.7bn. This, the report states, is 'simply not credible'. ADVERTISEMENT Philosopher Paulo Coelho said: 'Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.' Taking a rosy financial future for granted, which is written on such shifting sands, could come at extreme cost. Spending what we can afford really ought not be such a radical concept. There is a sword of Damocles over the world's economy thanks to Trump's tariffs. The potential for wider wars in the Middle East or Ukraine could also wreak global trade havoc. Relying on the comfort of things we have taken for granted tends to come with a rude awakening. How long can we continue to get away with pressing the snooze button on the FAC's alarm calls?
