The Unbroken Window

Read all about it here … but really here.

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Worst Economic Reasoning, Ever. These are the sorts of folks that think they know best how to run your economic lives.
The two most egregious points are these:
(1) We really are hoping people go on the honor system and let us immunize people in the priority groups,” Southern Nevada Health District spokeswoman Stephanie Bethel said. “I [...]

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In Inside Higher Ed:
Facing furloughs and decimation of academic budgets, Berkeley faculty are dismayed to learn of university loans to fill multimillion-dollar deficits in athletics department — on top of annual subsidies.
Abstracting from sovereignty issues, does anyone at Berkeley not appreciate that if stupid loans and millions of dollars of subsdies are bad [...]

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Read the whole thing.
It’s hard not to laugh when viewing the results of the federal first-time home-buyer tax credit. The credit, worth up to $8,000 for the purchase of a home, has only been available since April of last year. Yet news of the latest taxpayer-funded mortgage scam has traveled fast. The Treasury’s inspector general [...]

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An article I wrote several years ago …
A Starbucks A Day Pushes Retirement Away
Investing is the glamorous side of personal finance. To be a wise investor, however, it is first necessary to develop and commit to a sensible savings plan – a less glamorous endeavor. Saving is difficult because resources are limited, while opportunities to [...]

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If I spend roughly $3 per day on coffee over a 50 year period, I am implicitly valuing coffee drinking by at least $500,000. I probably get even more satisfaction than that. And that is just on coffee. Imagine the value I get from living in a safe, comfortable home, or driving my car.
Why do [...]

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Arnold Kling illustrates how Uncle Sam does it in the subprime crisis:

I think there is something even more sinister going on. I interpret the pay czar in terms of Murray Edelman’s symbolic uses of politics. The idea is to focus on a symbol of the cause of taxpayer losses–bonuses of the executives of bailed out [...]

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There is no reason to believe that there is a market flaw in our inability to produce and distribute more vaccine. The problem is caused by “our” “benevolent” government. All manner of companies produce all manner of goods and services that are seasonal and subject to dramatic changes from year over year, and perhaps are [...]

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When you live in a world where unicorns don’t roam, scarce resources need to be rationed. Even here in profilgate Rochester, hard decisions sometimes have to get made:
More than 700 Rochester students who rode the bus to school last year are finding other transportation this year after the City School District began enforcing its transportation [...]

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Count another in favor of prudence.
We examine the evidence on episodes of large stances in fiscal policy, both in cases of fiscal stimuli and in that of fiscal adjustments in OECD countries from 1970 to 2007.  Fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts are more likely to increase growth than those based upon spending increases.    As [...]

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