In the midst of a generally sensible Bloomberg View column by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser comes this passage:

The history of America's local economies illustrates the dangers of relying solely on large, established companies. Fifty years ago, the economist Benjamin Chinitz noted that New York appeared more resilient than Pittsburgh, which he credited to the entrepreneurship inculcated by New York's garment industry.

Chinitz noted that "the average establishment in the apparel industry, for example, has one-sixth as many employees as the average establishment in primary metals." Since big companies produce middle managers more than entrepreneurs, he said, "You do not breed as many entrepreneurs per capita in families allied with steel as you do in families allied with apparel."

Chinitz's claim has been supported by many studies...

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Harvard's renovation plans for its residential houses where undergraduates live include "flat-screen televisions" for student rooms, "courtesy of Harvard," the Harvard Crimson reports. Also, "wall jacks for students to connect their gaming systems and computers to the television screen."

When I was an undergraduate, students provided their own televisions, if they had them at all. But at that time tuition, room, and board was less than half what it is now.

If I were Senator Grassley or Congressman Paul Ryan I'd introduce a bill tomorrow that reduces federal Pell Grant or research grant spending to any higher education institution by the precise amount of money that that higher institution spent on televisions for student residences or on wall jacks for "gaming systems." The money is fungible, we're in a trillion-dollar a year deficit, and we're borrowing money from China for this? It's not even that flat-screen tvs are so expensive these days, but that just goes to show that the students should be able to buy them themselves if they want them.

"After my election I have more flexibility." — President Obama, caught on a hot microphone speaking to Russian President Medvedev. (Link via Mike Allen's Politico Playbook.)

A cynical translation of this would be: "Let's not tell the American people what I'm really going to do in my second term until after they vote for me."

The prospect of a second-term Obama with "more flexibility" is the sort of thing that might motivate even a lot of centrist or conservative voters who aren't particularly enthusiastic about Mitt Romney to get to the polls in November.

The New York State Senate has passed a bill that would outlaw leaving children younger than 8 in a car alone, Lenore Skenazy reports at her Free Range Kids blog. Ms. Skenazy, a former colleague of mine at the New York Sun, calls the proposed law "overprotective" and "unnecessary" and observes:

The problem is that what I consider a "significant risk" may be quite different from what the authorities consider a "significant risk." So even if I think my 7-year-old can wait in the car, reading a comic book, while I go in to buy stamps, someone else with a badge or gavel might consider that treacherous.

The comments string on her site is also worth a look.

The Queens Chronicle also has a good, skeptical story.

Vice President Cheney's heart transplant over the weekend brought to mind a 2005 New York Sun editorial, America's Heart. The Sun commented on the news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that "Between 1950 and 2002, the latest year covered in yesterday's release, mortality from heart disease declined by 59%," and concluded:

the news this week reaffirms an aphorism first uttered, at least within our hearing, by the longtime editor of the Wall Street Journal, Robert Bartley, who said, "On a net basis, modernity is good for you." Politicians and patients may dwell on the problems of the American medical system, but the numbers are in and they suggest that for all the complaining, American ingenuity, innovation, free markets, and capitalism are driving real improvements in health.

The CDC has updated the data since then. Here is what they show for white men age 65 to 74, the group into which Mr. Cheney, who is 71, falls:

Even discounting for the accusatory tone that inevitably comes with any article that includes the words "a three-month investigation by the New York Times" and that lists, at the end of the story, five reporters who contributed in addition to the one who wrote the piece, today's front-page Times article on Wyckoff Hospital is a fine example of the corruption that can ensue when government money flows into health care. I've made the point here before about the cars driven by the doctors treating Medicare and Medicaid patients. Now the Times finds a hospital administration driving a $160,000 Bentley, then driven in a hospital-owned Lincoln Town Car and Cadillac Escalade, who says in his own defense, ""You know how many guys had 500 SE Mercedes there?"

"Welfare cadillac" was the shorthand used back during the Reagan administration for this sort of thing. Maybe it's time for a new catch-phrase: "health care cadillac."

From a Bloomberg View editorial arguing that state and local governments should be allowed to prevent food stamp recipients from spending their benefits on soda, potato chips, and other "junk food":

When the Food Stamp Act was adopted in 1964, hunger was a deep problem. Today, the far bigger public health threat is obesity and overconsumption of foods linked to chronic diseases -- such as diabetes -- that contribute to escalating medical costs. In low-income families, overweight children outnumber those considered underweight by 7-to-1.

Earlier coverage of this issue here.

Maybe it's just that I like bagels (though not particularly the frozen pre-packaged kind), but isn't the story of Murray Lender, as told in today's New York Times obituary and also one in the Wall Street Journal, a great capitalist tale? As far as I can tell by putting the Times and Journal accounts together, it goes something like this: Harry Lender comes to America from Poland in 1927 and opens a bagel bakery in his West Haven, Connecticut, garage (add Lender's Bagels to the list of American businesses, like Apple and Hewlett Packard, that began in a garage). He puts his son to work "counting bagels in the backyard bakery before he was 11." More from the Times: "After graduating from the Junior College of Commerce (now Quinnipiac University) in Hamden, Conn., he served two years in the Army, then went to work full time in the family business."

Michael Kinsley has a column in Bloomberg View:

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 begins with a "finding" of "rising productivity and affluence." These are different times. In today's zero-sum world, someone who sits on a tenured chair or other sinecure is denying a place to someone else, probably younger. Was the law ever intended to protect baby boomers in no particular financial distress looking for a suitable capstone to a successful career?

In a recent column about Allan Meltzer's new book Why Capitalism?, I mentioned Professor Meltzer's first law of regulation: "lawyers and bureaucrats regulate," but "markets circumvent regulation."

Today's case in point comes from the Wall Street Journal, which reports:

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The American government, which has been shoveling out federally guaranteed loans to American solar power companies, is now going to try to help by taxing the companies' foreign competitors, the Wall Street Journal reports:

U.S. trade officials slapped modest tariffs on imports of Chinese solar panels, giving a partial victory to solar-equipment manufacturers in the U.S. but stopping short of harsh duties that could spark a trade war....the Commerce Department announced preliminary duties of between 2.9% and 4.73% on Chinese solar cells and solar panels.

My bet is if the American government decided to impose a new 4.73% federal tax on Wall Street Journal subscriptions, or Wall Street Journal advertising, the word that the newspaper used to describe it in a news article wouldn't be "modest," but outrageous.

The left-of-center Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is criticizing the Obama administration for a proposal, as part of the president's budget, that would raise the minimum rent charged in federally subsidized housing to $75 a month from $25 a month. "Policymakers can find much better ways to secure $75 million or so in savings to help comply with the $501 billion statutory cap on non-defense appropriations for fiscal year 2013 than by making some of the poorest American families and children still more destitute," the center says. The Obama administration's proposal is even "harsher than" a proposal approved earlier this year by a subcommittee in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which would raise the minimum rent to $69.45 a month.

The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, today begins the first of four in a series of lectures he is offering as part of an undergraduate course at the George Washington University school of business. Professor Bernanke is a Bush appointee, and some of my best friends and relatives are professors, so please don't take this the wrong way, but there are certain tendencies among some academics — like the tendency to lecture in a somewhat condescending way to a captive audience — that can be grating when they manifest themselves not in a professor but in a politician or a public servant. President Obama, who taught law school, and his economic policy adviser Larry Summers, and even Newt Gingrich have been known at times to display some of these tendencies. A reader-content co-creator-watchdog-participant-community member sent me a link to a link to a link to this Victor Davis Hanson piece from 2010, "We Are Ruled by Professors," which gets into some of these issues.