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 Education on May 31st, 2010
Your tax dollars are directly and indirectly funding things like this at American Universities: The $6 million Irwin Academic Services Center which serves athletes – about 550 of the total of 37,000 students on campus. Framingham State College plans to spend $191,000 building a two-car garage and stone patio for its state-owned president’s house … [...]
Posted in Unintended Consequences on May 30th, 2010
The Galen Institute’s Grace-Marie Turner reports that Obamacare will require employers to evaluate their health plans’ affordability by calculating each employee’s household income, not just that worker’s individual wages. This likely will involve, at a minimum, collecting income declarations from every staff member. Remember what happened to out-of-wedlock births when welfare programs were rolled out [...]
Posted in Fun Facts on May 29th, 2010
142 years ago today the Great Train Robbery took place in Indiana. The 7 members of the Reno gang made off with $96,000 in loot.That’s about $1.56 million in today’s dollars.
Posted in Voluntary Society on May 28th, 2010
Stop calling people who “demand higher interest rates” on sovereign debt vigilantes. It is not that being a vigilante is a bad thing – despite the connotations of that term. Rather, stop calling them vigilantes because they are not vigilantes. When the Greeks spend like drunken sailors, and when the American government spends like drunken [...]
Posted in Regulation on May 27th, 2010
I just read that the Administration is suspending Arctic drilling. Now, oil exploration and drilling is not exactly an unregulated free-market frenzy. So, if it is dangerous to drill in deep Artic waters, then shouldn’t regulators have realized this before the massive Gulf explosion? I can’t blame the Administration for showing the public it is [...]
Posted in Price Controls, Price System on May 27th, 2010
A popular view of minimum wage increases is that they “spiral up.” In other words, when the minimum wage is raised from say $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour, employers will increase the wages of low-wage workers, which will then subsequently force the wages of other workers up and wha-la … everyone is richer [...]
Posted in Welfare State on May 26th, 2010
Within a radius of 4 homes from me, I know for sure that 1 home has a person receiving disability from an injury while working in a plant. He somehow manages to collect scrap metal in the neighborhood and weld it in his workshop all day long. We have another home with a disability recipient [...]
Posted in Institutions on May 25th, 2010
As I live through each day, one of the reactions I cannot shake is, “gosh, is there any part of my life that doesn’t have government all over it?” From the second I pour the milk in my coffee (FDA approved) to the time I turn my car on (the registration, emissions inspection and license [...]
Posted in Corporatism, Regulation on May 24th, 2010
There is virtually no action to be taken by a business that could not be considered to run afoul of anti-trust legislation. Modern Anti-Trust is administered through two government agencies – the Justice Department’s Anti-Trust Division and the Federal Trade Commission. By the way the statue standing outside the FTC headquarters should give you an [...]
Posted in Socialism on May 23rd, 2010
Via Greg Mankiw, Guess the Author: Read the passage. Then click on the link below to learn the author’s identity. In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories [...]
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