WHO 2018 Motion: 100% Inheritance tax
For the Winter Holidays Open (WHO) in Zagreb, two prelim motions and a final motion have been announced. • THW introduce a 100% inheritance tax • TH regrets the increasing focus on STEM education...
Economic Thinking Posts on Debate Topics
High School Courses and Claims Should Be Debated
Brookings Institution’s Robert Litan offers A counterintuitive proposal for improving education and healing America: Debate-centered instruction (Brookings, September 27, 2018). Litan begins with a paragraph about current political and economic challenges then begins his...
North & South: Industrial Progress Reducing Poverty (and Terrorism)
[Updated from earlier post on earlier freedom vs. equity value debate topic] For students researching and debating the foreign aid reform and international terrorism debate topics, Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel, North and South offers food for...
Notes on Economic Development and Reducing Terrorism
Notes and links for presentation to the Student Conference On National Affairs (SCONA) Texas A&M University, February 25, 2011 Below are updated notes from my presentation to military students attending the 2011 Student Conference...
For the Poor, How Much Energy is Enough? (updated)
For prosperity and human flourishing, how much energy is enough? American settlers survived and over time prospered burning wood for cooking and heat. Later energy innovations brought higher-density energy from the earth, with coal,...
How Much Foreign Aid to “Strengthen” Foreign Tax Collection?
Many articles supporting foreign aid tell of polls showing Americans think foreign aid is 25% of the federal budget when, these articles claim, foreign aid is only 1.2%. The Balance post, Current U.S. Discretionary Spending:...
Legal Immigration, Freedom of Movement, and National Sovereignty
The school year has begun and immigration policy is in the news. Current national and Texas debate topics focus on immigration policy and values. The national NSDA (and UIL) policy topic is: Resolved: The...
Energy Race is On: Wind, Solar, Gas, Coal, and Oil Sands
The energy race is on, with separate lanes for teams advancing wind, solar, gas, coal, and oil sands technologies. Across the world enterprises race to discover and develop new energy-rich places and raw materials, searching...
The Fight Against International Terrorism Comes Home
(Revised from November 4, 2014/October 27, 2016 post) The United States doesn’t run an old-style foreign empire. But one could argue the U.S. runs an”experimental empire” where foreign military operations and foreign aid projects...
Why foreign aid fails – and how to really help Africa
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson in Why foreign aid fails – and how to really help Africa (The Spectator, January 2014) discuss the influence their book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and...