Just to prove I’m fair and balanced:

  • I think that Greg Mankiw, the head of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors, is getting a bad rap for his comments on outsourcing. The Washington Post has an editorial defending Mankiw that I think is right on the money. There is nothing better for the long term economic prospects of the United States than other countries climbing out of developing status and building robust economies, and outsourcing is a big part of that. Besides, outsourcing isn’t the cause of the massive job loss over the past few years anyway. As a software developer, the idea of more and more development jobs migrating overseas is unpleasant, but turning toward protectionism isn’t the answer either.
  • Saudi Arabia deserves more criticism for building a fence along its border with Yemen. It wasn’t that long ago that the border between Saudi Arabia and Yemen could not even be drawn on a map — nobody had really decided where one country stopped and the other country started. (The fact that the border passes through basically uninhabitable terrain helped in that regard.) Now the Saudis are building a big fence to keep the Yemenis out. If we’re going to criticize Israel for building a fence to separate from Palestinians, we should do the same when it comes to the Saudis. (There are a number of reasons why the Saudi fence isn’t making news like Israel’s fence, not the least of which is that Israel is building its fence on land that isn’t really part of Israel, but there should be more balance here.)