Macroeconomics
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Is free trade generally beneficial for a country?
Agree
[The Economist was] founded in 1843 to support the cause of free trade.
Is the world economy largely decoupled from the United States?
Mostly Agree
Perhaps the best support for decoupling comes from America itself. Fourth-quarter ['07] profits of big companies, such as Coca-Cola, IBM and DuPont, were better than expected as strong sales growth in emerging markets offset a sharp slowdown at home. In other words, bits of American business are rising above their own economy. With luck, the world economy can rise above America's.
Will there be a global recession before 2010?
Mostly Agree
As the financial crisis has broadened and intensified, the global economy has begun to suffocate. That is why the world’s central banks have been administering emergency measures, including a round of co-ordinated interest-rate cuts on October 8th. With luck they will prevent catastrophe. They are unlikely to avert a global recession.
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Iraq
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Should the United States invade Iraq?
Agree
If Mr Hussein refuses to disarm, it would be right to go to war.
Can the US military presence in Iraq help create democracy?
Neutral
The country no longer looks in imminent danger of flying apart or falling into everlasting anarchy. In September 2007 this newspaper supported the surge not because we had faith in Iraq but only in the desperate hope that the surge might stop what was already a bloodbath from becoming even worse (see article). The situation now is different: Iraq is still a mess, but something approaching a normal future for its people is beginning to look achievable.
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Tax
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Is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a huge risk to the economy?
Agree
They have become such vast buyers that they have become a risk to liquidity. Suppose that, as some believe, America is going through a housing bubble. Given their exposure to mortgages, what happens if the bubble bursts?
Was the US government's $700 billion bailout ultimately good for the taxpayer?
Mostly Disagree
In our view, the pair [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] should have been nationalised back in July, and the new scheme should have had a clearer plan to shrink or break up Fannie and Freddie, so that they never again hold the taxpayer hostage (though not right now, because of the ailing housing market).
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Happiness
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Is happiness dependent on comparing yourself to others?
Agree
...people tend to compare their lot with that of others. In one striking example, students at Harvard University were asked whether they would prefer (a) $50,000 a year while others got half that or (b) $100,000 a year while others got twice as much. A majority chose (a). They were happy with less, as long as they were better off than others.
Does money make you happy?
Mostly Disagree
...according to many surveys taken in rich countries [...] once a country has lifted itself out of poverty, further rises in income seem not to create a meaningful rise in the proportion of people who count themselves as happy. Since the 1950s, for example, the proportion of Americans who tell pollsters that they are “very happy” has stayed constant at around 30%, while the proportion who say that they are “not very happy” has barely fallen.
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Politics
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Should gay and straight couples have the same legal benefits?
Agree
The case for allowing gays to marry begins with equality, pure and simple. Why should one set of loving, consenting adults be denied a right that other such adults have and which, if exercised, will do no damage to anyone else? Not just because they have always lacked that right in the past, for sure: until the late 1960s, in some American states it was illegal for black adults to marry white ones, but precious few would defend that ban now on grounds that it was “traditional”.
Should heads of state shun meeting the Dalai Lama to appease China?
Disagree
This week Gordon Brown refused to invite the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, to Downing Street but met him at the home of the leader of the Anglican church. That was a fudge to appease China, and is a genuine disgrace.
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Abortion
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Can abortion significantly reduce crime?
Neutral
A paper published by Christopher Foote and Christopher Goetz, two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, finds an embarrassing hole in the evidence [that the answer is yes].
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Oil
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Has oil hit its peak in production due to limited world reserves?
Disagree
[In] the words of Exxon Mobil, the oil production peak is unlikely “for decades to come”. Governments may decide to shift away from petroleum because of its nasty geopolitics or its contribution to global warming. But it is wrong to imagine the world's addiction to oil will end soon, as a result of genuine scarcity. As Western oil companies seek to cope with being locked out of the Middle East, the new era of manufactured fuel will further delay the onset of peak production.
Will oil prices surge over the next year?
Mostly Disagree
The price of oil, which will average $65 a barrel—slightly less than in 2006—will weigh on profits and lighten wallets. Tensions in the Middle East will keep prices at a premium.
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Science
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Is substantially reducing CO2 emissions worthwhile?
Mostly Agree
[Our] survey will argue that although the science remains uncertain, the chances of serious consequences are high enough to make it worth spending the (not exorbitant) sums needed to try to mitigate climate change.
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Business
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Will Blu-ray prevail over HDDVD as the high definition video format?
Mostly Disagree
HD-DVD looks to be the winner in the battle between the incompatible HD-DVD and Blu-ray technologies, given its cheaper production costs.
Will ebooks hurt publishers?
Agree
Publishing has only two indispensable participants: authors and readers. As with music, any technology that brings these two groups closer makes the whole industry more efficient—but hurts those who benefit from the distance between them.
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US Politics
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Will Barack Obama win the Democratic nomination?
Mostly Disagree
The nomination is not yet Mrs Clinton's, but it increasingly looks as though it is hers to lose.
Mostly Agree
For Hillary Clinton [the debate on the March 26th 2008] represented a final chance to unsettle Barack Obama ahead of the next round of primaries, and she failed.
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Middle East Politics
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Should the US president talk face to face with Iran's president?
Agree
Mr Obama had it right. Speaking to the enemy is an ordinary part of diplomacy and does not on its own amount to appeasement. In Munich in 1938, Neville Chamberlain's sin was not that he talked to Adolf Hitler, but that instead of standing up to him he sold Czechoslovakia down the river. Had the British prime minister then been Winston Churchill, the outcome of the meeting, and the history of the world, might have been different.
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Energy
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Will solar be the biggest energy source of the future?
Agree
Wind is only an interim stop on the way to a world where electricity no longer relies on fossil fuels. The ultimate goal is to harvest the sun’s energy directly by intercepting sunlight, rather than by waiting for that sunlight to stir up the atmosphere and sticking turbines in the resulting airstreams.
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