Category Archives: Uncategorized

Last Sunday (2 Feb.) was the 66th Annual GRAMMY Awards show. Although I am a huge country music fan, it is puzzling how a compilation of mediocre songs like “Cowboy Carter” won the Best Album of the Year award. Unless … Continue reading →

THE IMMORTAL ADAM SMITH, PART 4 Let’s pick up where we left off — with Adam Smith’s Second Law, i.e. the counter-intuitive claim that a group of people will be better off overall when each person keeps busy pursuing his … Continue reading →

THE IMMORTAL ADAM SMITH, PART 3 “Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has … Continue reading →

THE IMMORTAL ADAM SMITH, PART 2 In my previous post, I walked us through the first two paragraphs of Book IV, Chapter 2 of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. To recap, Smith concedes that restraints on foreign trade will benefit … Continue reading →

Among other things, Adam Smith devotes an entire chapter of The Wealth of Nations to “Restraints upon the Importation from Foreign Countries.” (See Book IV, Chapter 2 of his magnum opus.) To begin with, the Scottish philosopher-economist concedes right off … Continue reading →

Although the text of Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution specifically empowers the Congress (not the president) to set import tariffs (“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises …”), … Continue reading →

I will address some legal aspects of Trump’s executive order imposing tariffs on imports from our main trading partners (Mexico, Canada, and China) in my next post; in the meantime, today’s “Monday map” post is dedicated to my hometown: Los … Continue reading →

Pictured below (from left to right) is principal Dr Rodriguez, yours truly, my youngest daughter Adys Ann, and my wife Sydjia. Our daughter won her school’s spelling bee two years in a row! School motto: “Work Hard. Play Hard. Pray … Continue reading →

See also this tweet by @wwwojtekk.