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 May 13th, 2012
After reading David Zetland’s excellent “End of Abundance” I’ve read his blog very closely. I’ve set a personal limit on the number of blogs I follow and I’ve used Aquanomics to replace a top 5 blog that I was reading. Here is a post he just reposted from last year: a nice Sunday evening reflection. I’ve [...]
Posted in Classical Liberalism, Macroeconomics, Politics on Apr 16th, 2012
Religious worship of the multiplier can very quickly devolve into a way to justify dishonesty in the market. I wished Keynesians would recognize this. Think of how such reasoning might go (from the standpoint of a businessman, no friend you should note, of capitalism): Businessman: “Gee, I have a product that some people like. If [...]
Posted in Economics Problems, Politics on Apr 13th, 2012
In this week’s episode of “we need a name for this phenomenon” consider the following two circumstances. I was doing an interview the other day when the interviewer asked me for a simple, “back of the envelope” way to understand which foods/products were “better” for the environment. Without getting into the nuances of the question, [...]
Posted in Politics, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways, labor markets on Apr 8th, 2012
Did you ever notice that when someone tries to point out how “stingy” government support for the poor is, or how “stingy” Walmart is or how bad the conditions of the low-skilled labor markets are that they invoke a kind of rugged individualism that would make Herbert Spencer blush? Seriously. I’ve seen many an argument [...]
Posted in Market Failures, Politics on Mar 28th, 2012
I promised you yesterday that I would repeat this point. A public good is NOT a good that is provided by government. Find a new name for it. I have offered up in the past calling those things “government goods.” Public schooling is far more accurately called government schooling than public. The word “public” has [...]
Tim Taylor has yet another fine post today, this time summarizing the incidence of taxes when marginal income tax rates were high in 1958 versus today when they are, across the board, lower. Here are some highlights: At the bottom, across this time period, roughly 20% of all tax returns owed no tax, and so [...]
Posted in Politics on Mar 14th, 2012
My reading of the literature on urban economics (and migratory patterns of humans for 10,000 years) is that the net effect of people moving into cities is positive. Even as urban living introduces a whole host of difficult to bargain externalities, the peer effects, network effects and other agglomeration effects of living in big cities [...]
Posted in Politics, Welfare State on Mar 13th, 2012
Economists have argued in many places that there may be a justification for public funding of the arts/humanities. And I am sure you have encountered arguments from people that suggest arts funding is shrinking or needs to be bigger and so on. But the fact remains that the arts get subsidized from at least two [...]
Posted in Politics on Mar 8th, 2012
By now I am sure you all know of the disaster that is the Government Motors’ Chevy Volt. It has the honor of being among the world’s first coal-powered cars and has the other honor of selling virtually none of the units that it promised it would sell. Here’s a simple question I am hoping [...]
Posted in Politics on Mar 1st, 2012
In response to why it was important for the Senate to vote the way they did on the contraceptive amendment today: We have never had a conscience clause for insurance companies,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. The measure would have given insurers more opportunites to deny coverage for certain treatments, she added. “A lot of [...]
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