Years Ago in Reason

From the June 2001 issue

* "If we really need nuclear power...then we must be willing to pay the full cost, including the true cost of liability insurance. If nuclear power plants are as safe as their backers tell us, then repeal of [limited liability] would not be catastrophic. On the other hand, if these power plants are really so dangerous as to be uninsurable, then it would be far better to realize it now."

-- Robert Poole Jr., "The Nuclear Power Issue"

* "Gerald R. Ford...sent shivers up and down the spine of every sober American when he announced his wonderful plan to shell out $135 million to vaccinate every American against a nasty strain of flu virus expected to race across the land by late next winter. There's no faulting the president's humanism, and you'll find no fan of the flu in this corner. But one might ask: Is this really the proper function of the federal government?"

-- David Brudnoy, "Peace on Earth, Flu Shots for All"

* "No monetary system has yet been devised that has proven free of problems....[The] era of 1865 to 1896 saw a massive deflation under a gold standard, deflation that produced the populist political movement, followed between 1896 and 1913 with a more rapid gold inflation. The main point to be said in favor of the gold standard is that attempts to manage currencies have proven even more disastrous -- as the deflation of 1929 to 1933 and the inflation of 1939 to date have shown."

-- Joe Cobb, "Why Credit Cards Cause Inflation"

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