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 Politics on Apr 24th, 2010
Coyote tells us what he is almost required to do as a campground manager: I was navigating around the Kentucky property tax forms site (one of the really tedious tasks for our company this year is to fill out zillions of personal property tax forms listing virtually every pencil we own in any number of [...]
Posted in Health Care on Apr 23rd, 2010
Would you prefer a world where we “waste” 10% of our expenditures on administrative costs, or one where we only “waste” 5%? Of course you cannot answer that question without knowing how much we spend. If you get the same product in each case, but total spending in the first is $100 and total spending [...]
Posted in labor markets on Apr 22nd, 2010
Several folks have e-mailed me asking that I repost a thought or two on the original auto bailouts. Here is one of them, and for fun, I added the following section to my original post. But let’s assume that even all 1 million auto workers would be out of work. That of course would never [...]
Posted in Government Gone Wild on Apr 21st, 2010
Here he is, for the first time, softens up his stance on not taxing anyone other than truly wealthy. Taxation is legalized plunder. The government takes something from you without your consent. That millions of people vote to have this theft put on them does not make it any less unjust. And what is this [...]
Posted in History on Apr 21st, 2010
Defines the office of the Executive in the US, and the powers of the President who is charged with executing those duties. The comprehensive list of duties is here: he is commander in chief, as a civilian, over the armed forces he has the power to grant reprieves or pardons he has the power to [...]
Posted in Behavior on Apr 21st, 2010
It used to be the case that people (in the words of Ronald Reagan) “can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without automatically concluding the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one.” If, today, some intellectual stood astride the very same fat man and thin man, would [...]
Posted in Fun Facts on Apr 20th, 2010
Which candidate, McCain or Obama, received more campaign money from Pfizer, Exxon and Goldman Sachs? Well, you know the answer. That doesn’t mean one is “better” or “worse” than the other. The point is intended to shake folks from this absurd notion that somehow the political left is not the entrenched corporatist entity that the [...]
Posted in Economics Problems, Economists on Apr 20th, 2010
Parts of this piece from Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman accurately capture some of the difficulties facing policymakers as they think about bank “re”regulation. Here is an example: A second version of reform calls for a full recreation of the Quiet Period banking system. We’ll reinstate Glass-Steagall, protect the depository institutions, and let the investment banks [...]
Posted in Price System on Apr 20th, 2010
Mark Perry channels Gary Becker. As the recent all-male coal mining deaths in West Virginia illustrate, a disproportionate number of men work in higher-risk occupations that are typically compensated with higher pay like coal mining (almost 100% male), fire fighters (96.6% male), police officers (84.5% male), correctional officers (73.1% male), and construction (97.4% male), BLS [...]
Posted in Corporatism, Regulation on Apr 19th, 2010
Many valuable links from tomorrow’s WSJ. In its own way, the Stanford calamity is arguably worse than the SEC’s Madoff bungle. In the Madoff case, passionate outsider Harry Markopolos could find no one at the SEC who took the time to understand the scam, cared enough and had enough authority to shut down the fraud. [...]
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