Weekend links

Ethanol: great for corn farmers, bad for everyone else.

• A look at how the material plight of the poor has improved over the last 25 years. The best friend of the poor continues to be capitalism.

• Don Boudreaux writes a letter to Paul Krugman about speculators. Short version: there is no reason to tax speculators to discourage them as they will lose money anyway if they make the wrong bet, which should be discouragement enough.

• Democrats are readying another "jobs bill" in Congress. Because, you see, by taking money out of the economy through taxation and borrowing, sending it to Washington and then putting it back into the economy through government spending you create jobs. Right.

• Russell Harding on the disaster that is ethanol.