From a particularly talented writer at the new Amateur Economists online magazine:
Polls show a large number of Americans are not satisfied with the choice they’re faced with this November: Obama or McCain?
One reason is that the two major-party candidates show an equal level of disdain for basic economic principles. Obama decries “the idolatry of the free market” and McCain chastises “speculators” and says he wishes interest rates could be 0%. As Investor’s Business Daily put it gently in a recent front-page article, “neither stresses fiscal discipline.” So what’s an amateur economist to do? In 1848, 10.13% of Americans voted for the Free Soil Party’s candidate for president even though they knew he would not win. These courageous citizens could not and would not vote for the pro-slavery Democrats or the pro-slavery Whigs. Seventeen years later, slavery was no more. This goes to show that the ideas a committed minority supports—such as abolition, Social Security or Goldwater conservatism—can win over time even if the candidates who initially champion the ideas lose.
;-D
The analysis of single payer health insurance on that page seems both to overestimate its cost and underestimate it savings over our current system. For what we are paying *right now* per capita, we could cover everyone with single payer, universal coverage.
Very well written and thought out… Perhaps the bigger issue is the quality and inconsistency of third party candidates that are being r0lled out. Bob Barr is a conservative Republican. Nader is a has been who is now off his rocker… Cynthia McKinney doesn’t inspire or offer anything compelling. Chuck Baldwin… who is he? This article makes sense so long as the candidate and his/her movement can back it up with something different.
http://www.modernwhig.org
Check out an up-and-coming political movement!