Mark D. White

Writer, editor, teacher

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about

I’m a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, where I teach courses in philosophy, economics, and law, and the author/editor/co-editor of several books.

Category: Newspapers

  • Want social engineering of your diet with that meal? The New York Times’ Mark Bittman does

    In today's New York Times, food writer Mark Bittman continues his call for regulation of food choices through a comprehensive scheme of taxes and subsidies. While he takes pains to point out the savings in health care costs this would bring forth, he does not hide his desire to engage in social engineering, reorienting the…

  • Yes, of course health insurance improves health, but…

    Mark D. White At the New York Times' Economix blog this morning, David Leonhardt reports on a recent NBER study that studied the health outcomes of low-income people who either were or were not granted access to Medicare through a lottery, and good golly gosh, guess what they found: those with health insurance had better…

  • When economics and philosophy divorced…

    Mark D. White In a recent "The Shrink and the Sage" piece in the Financial Times Magazine, Julian Baggini (prolific popularizer of philosophy) and Antonia Macaro discuss the pursuit of happiness, which is very interesting in itself, but I was particularly amused by how Baggini started his half of the discussion: When psychology and philosophy…

  • This is what happens when you vote on issues of human rights…

    Mark D. White From today's Albany TImes Union: CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — More than 1,500 married, New Hampshire gay couples could be placed into a classification all their own if lawmakers succeed next year in repealing the state's two-year-old law legalizing same-sex unions. Legislation to repeal gay marriage is one of the highly charged issues…

  • Why hasn’t social economics focused more on the family?

    Mark D. White A question occurred to me this morning as I did some basic research on alimony after reading Alexandria Harwin's New York Times op-ed "Ending the Alimony Guessing Game": why don't social economists focus more on the family? Ms. Harwin's article interested me more at first due to her discussion of judicial discretion…

  • Considering “The Failure of Rational Choice Philosophy” (The New York Times’ The Stone)

    Mark D. White In today's installment of The Stone in The New York Times, UCLA's John McCumber presents a very critical view of "rational choice philosophy," by which he seems to mean the narrow version promulgated by most mainstream economists. In discussing the ethical problem with rational choice theory, he writes: Rational choice theory, being…

  • The overseas superstar status of Michael Sandel and what economics can learn from it

    Mark D. White Thomas L. Friedman had an interesting piece in The New York Times last week describing the rock star reception given in Asia recently to Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel, author of Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? and lecturer in the accompanying PBS series (available here). In the piece, Friedman…

  • David Brooks’ false dichotomy regarding autonomy and sociality

    Mark D. White Last week, David Brooks' column "It's Not About You" in The New York Times spoke to the challenges that new college graduates face as they enter "the real world," focusing on the change in the imposed structure that has shielded them from life to this point: More important, their lives have been perversely…

  • Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Defended on Moral Terms, Not Economic Ones

    Mark D. White Sociologist Jaye Cee Whitehead (Pacific University) has a wonderful piece in The New York Times today titled "The Wrong Reasons for Same-Sex Marriage," arguing that the recent arguments espousing the economic benefits of same-sex marriage for cash-strapped states and municipalities miss the point: Those making these economic arguments probably have the best…

  • The Royal Wedding and the Nobility of Commerce

    Mark D. White There's a very interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal about the commcerical background of the Middleton family, and how the impending royal nuptials can be seen as belated recognition of the worth of commerce and entrepreneurship: Much has been made of the fact that Kate Middleton, Prince William's bride-to-be, is a…