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 Economic Illiteracy, trade on May 22nd, 2012
You may have seen last week that the Executive branch ordered itself to impose tariffs on imports of Chinese solar panels to put boulders in the harbors of Los Angeles. There is one political point today to make and one economic point. The political point is this: did US taxpayers vote for this? Do they [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy on May 19th, 2012
Why I don’t get even more frustrated when folks ignore the economics we teach. The reason is quite clear: at some point economics comes back to bite you in the tookus. It’s not really satisfying either to say “I told you so” largely because that means we’re all poorer than we have to be. Here’s [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy on May 8th, 2012
Right now the spot price of a barrel of crude oil is $99. The price of a future, for delivery in 4 years, is $89. You ARE all of course aware that “speculators” are as active in the market today as a few months ago when futures prices were well in advance of spot prices. [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 26th, 2012
Recently I was listening to a conversation about unions. As expected very quickly into the conversation someone mentioned that “unionization rates were really high in the mid-20th century” and that this was also a time of unprecedented US economic growth. Well, it certainly was a time of robust economic growth. But why must we regularly [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Education, Environment, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 19th, 2012
Our student paper printed this article on how arguments against wind are overblown. For interested students, I will be going into the gory details in Eco 238, so will not rehash all of the economics of wind here. I’ll sporadically return to this piece in between my puppy drownings and coal burning rituals, but here [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Price System, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 17th, 2012
On my drive to school yesterday I saw a person outside the gas station on my way to the I-490 giving away/selling? bumper stickers. Among the panoply of choices included a “Romney-Gekko 2012″ selection, another touting, “The Problem is Corporate Greed,” and another touting, “Oil Speculators Raise Gas by 60%,” and another, “Your Need to [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy on Apr 3rd, 2012
I used to take a much more charitable view of the guy, but not anymore. Here’s his latest bout of populism: On taxes, Obama is also expected to call for economic fairness encapsulated by the so-called “Buffett Rule,” arguing that the wealthy shouldn’t pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than middle-class [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Price System, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 3rd, 2012
On my drive into work this morning I heard several soundbites from folks in the current Obama Administration, including from the Central Planner himself, to the effect that, “Drill Baby Drill is stupid. Increasing the supply of oil will not have an impact on gas prices.” Now, I won’t yet paint this as the stupidest [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Education, Environment, Methodology on Mar 30th, 2012
It is extremely common in the modern “E”nvironmental movement to see the conflation of normative opinions of what various environmental policies ought to do with actual claims regarding the actual conduct and character of real world environmental policy. Even though many of us believe that good species conservation policy (for example) ought to encourage the [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Economics Problems, Economists on Mar 16th, 2012
So this is what the vigorous and free exchange of ideas has come to? Our dear friend is running around with a blowtorch in a hayfield … As a result, U.S. oil production has risen significantly over the past three years, reversing a decline over decades, while natural gas production has exploded. Given this expansion, [...]
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