Intellectuals have some very bad incentives according to renowned economist Thomas Sowell. He defines an intellectual as someone’s who’s end product are ideas (i.e. not an engineer, scientist, medical doctor, etc.). While admitting that he himself is an intellectual, he condemns that lunacy that pervades the intellectual community. The problem is there are no checks on their ideas. If an engineer builds a bridge and it collapses, that engineer has failed. However, if an intellectual pushes for certain policies that turn out to be disastrously wrong, they rarely face any ramifications for this whatsoever.

“Up to 20,000 people have died needlessly early after being denied cancer drugs on the [British National Health Service], it was revealed yesterday,” according to Daniel Martin of The Daily Mail. These unnecessary or unnecessarily quick deaths had to do with patients being refused cancer medication for rare forms of cancer.

Judge Jim Gray discusses with Reason Magazine, the six groups who benefit from drug prohibition. I’ll give you a hint, none of those groups are the average citizen:

There’s a lot of talk out there about green shoots, economic recovery and stabilization. Most people aren’t predicting giant leaps in GDP anytime soon, but some are predicting modest global GDP growth between 2-4 percent for 2010. As Greece goes bankrupt and looks to its EU compatriots for help, remember they’re not the only nation on the belly up path. And from a United States perspective, here are the numbers you should be hearing on a daily basis, but aren’t. It isn’t just a matter of restoring economic growth and reducing unemployment. Surprise, surprise: debt, unfulfillable promises and easy money have consequences. Unfortunately, we have plenty of all three:

We haven’t seen inflation on the whole during the financial rescue efforts, despite the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies. If you wanted to cherry pick certain assets, the argument could be made that $140/barrel oil, during a recession, coinciding with a dump of liquidity on the economy, could be related. Global oil transactions are denominated in US dollars. It is hard to imagine any other factor being solely responsible for such a historic, and counterintuitive, rise in petroleum during a recession.

If you didn’t think there was a wink and a nod relationship between large banks and the feds, the “Volcker Rule” should serve as an acknowledgment. Because lending and credit is so crucial to the economy, financial institutions know the government will backstop them during crisis mode in the industry.

Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute took a little trip back in time to check the government’s budget accuracy… they get an F minus. As Walter Williams points out here, this is nothing new, but in 2001, the Bush Administration forecasted that by 2010, the Federal government would have a $2.71 trillion dollar budget. According to Obama’s budget estimate, it will be $3.83 trillion dollars! The following chart shows the real budget vs. the forecast.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner discusses the burdens of his position, why he felt it was necessary to bailout the financial system and the paternal role taken by the federal government:

If economics is supply and demand, wouldn’t it be useful for companies if they could pull demand out of a hat; if they could create new marketplaces out of thin air, instantly cashing in on the first-mover advantage. There they would stand, titans of industry, as the lone player in a market.

The power of information, and misinformation, is immense. Google provides access to a vortex of data, images and videos with the press of a button (particularly when a user is “feeling lucky”). With the Internet age comes major concerns about privacy. What people find out about you on the Internet could influence whether you get that scholarship or government grant. It could be the reason why you’re turned down for health insurance. It could even be why you attract Facebook stalkers. In any case, there may be a way out of this unstoppable exposition of your personal life: move to a remote village. The Onion News Network reports: