Washington Post columnist George Will is coming to Lakeside Oct 21 to speak with students during the day (including my 7th period economics class) and with parents at night. Here are some columns of his that make for thought-provoking reading:

Climate Fixers’ Hard Sell, July 23 2009:

When New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called upon “young Americans” to “get a million people on the Washington Mall calling for a price on carbon,” another columnist, Mark Steyn, responded: “If you’re 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you’re graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade.”

Which could explain why the Mall does not reverberate with youthful clamors about carbon. And why, regarding climate change, the U.S. government, rushing to impose unilateral cap-and-trade burdens on the sagging U.S. economy, looks increasingly like someone who bought a closetful of platform shoes and bell-bottom slacks just as disco was dying.

Cooling Down the Cassandras, Oct 1 2009:

America needs a national commission appointed to assess the evidence about climate change. Alarmists will fight this because the first casualty would be the carefully cultivated and media-reinforced myth of consensus — the bald assertion that no reputable scientist doubts the gravity of the crisis, doubts being conclusive evidence of disreputable motives or intellectual qualifications.

A New Deal Worth Fostering, Aug 16 2009:

It is a poker skill to know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. Congress probably should fold its interference with Internet gambling and certainly should get its 10 thumbs off Americans’ freedom to exercise their poker skills online.

Higher Taxes, Anyone? July 12 2009:

To be fair, economics is a science of single instances, which means it is hardly a science. And it is least like one when we most crave certainty from it — when there is a huge and unprecedented event and educated guessing is the best anyone can do.

Carbon’s Power Brokers, June 1 2008:

If carbon emissions are the planetary menace that the political class suddenly says they are, why not a straightforward tax on fossil fuels based on each fuel’s carbon content? This would have none of the enormous administrative costs of the baroque cap-and-trade regime. And a carbon tax would avoid the uncertainties inseparable from cap-and-trade’s government allocation of emission permits sector by sector, industry by industry. So a carbon tax would be a clear and candid incentive to adopt energy-saving and carbon-minimizing technologies. That is the problem.

A carbon tax would be too clear and candid for political comfort. It would clearly be what cap-and-trade deviously is, a tax, but one with a known cost. Therefore, taxpayers would demand a commensurate reduction of other taxes. Cap-and-trade — government auctioning permits for businesses to continue to do business — is a huge tax hidden in a bureaucratic labyrinth of opaque permit transactions.

A Health ‘Reform’ To Regret, June 28 2009:

As market enthusiasts, conservatives should stop warning that the president’s reforms will result in health-care “rationing.” Every product, from a jelly doughnut to a jumbo jet, is rationed — by price or by politics. The conservative’s task is to explain why price is preferable. The answer is that prices produce a rational allocation of scarce resources.

Click here for a complete list of recent George Will columns.