The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Macroeconomics on Feb 22nd, 2010
Kill $900 billion of private sector output to get an additional $600 billion of public spending through. All good spending too, I bet. Here is the piece. By the way, Barro was a longtime (long ago) faculty member here at the U of R. I’d love to see someone else’s model of this spending.
Posted in Politics on Feb 22nd, 2010
Before proceeding, I’d remind readers that I did not vote in the last election, and I do not have a party affiliation. Is not one quality of an “effective” leader an ability to get their agenda through? When Bush was elected in 2000 and when Obama was elected in 2008, I would argue that each [...]
Posted in Paternalism on Feb 21st, 2010
Teens don’t really vote, so why should anyone care about what they think of the new teen driver law coming to New York? Sure, teenagers are old enough to go wield a weapon in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are old enough to be permitted to choose whether to go to college or which college to [...]
Posted in Fun Facts on Feb 20th, 2010
Imagine you have a class of 110 students. Further imagine you assign the class a task to complete on their own and bring to class as part of an assignment to be completed in class. Suppose that the task you give consists of producing a chart from source data, and asking students to deliver it [...]
Posted in Price System, Property Rights on Feb 19th, 2010
One of my bright students asked me a question that roughly goes like this: “What is the true definition of compulsory?” What could he possibly mean by that? Isn’t it obvious? Perhaps not. Consider two strategies a government can use to deal with a situation where lots of customers want to use a resource, but [...]
Posted in Resources on Feb 18th, 2010
Look at what has happened to the scarcity of phosphorous over the past 100 years. My student Andy Bowman writes As the global population exceeds 6.6 billion people, the need to feed the ever expanding population has placed an increased burden on the agricultural industry. Technological advances in farming and irrigation have streamlined food production, [...]
Posted in Welfare State on Feb 17th, 2010
From Mark Perry. I will show you these figures for NY State in a few days. For now, the comparisons between California and Texas are appropriate. “California, a laboratory of liberalism, is spiraling downward, driven by a huge budget deficit. It took years for compassionate liberalism to make California’s welfare menu contribute to the state [...]
Posted in Government Gone Wild on Feb 17th, 2010
New York is trying to be like California: The current limit on tax refunds the first three months of the year is almost $1.75 billion. The governor is considering chopping that maximum by $500 million, down to $1.25 billionIf you’re counting on your state tax refund to catch up on some bills, think again. You [...]
Posted in Ultimate Resource on Feb 17th, 2010
In Progress and Poverty, Henry George wrote: Here is a difference between the animal and the man. Both the jay-hawk and the man eat chickens, but the more jay-hawks the fewer chickens, while the more men the more chickens. Both the seal and the man eat salmon, but when a seal takes a salmon there [...]
Posted in Government Gone Wild on Feb 16th, 2010
Government demands Toyota recall documents. The US government is demanding! to find out if Toyota acted fast enough on recalling its damaged cars. Is it not mildly disturbing that the same US government is also the owner of the largest competitor to Toyota? What was that about independence? In what model of competition would Toyota [...]
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