The Unbroken Window

I’ve commonly encountered arguments for regulating various markets that sound like, “well, if you allowed for a market, then the poor wouldn’t be able to afford it.” That’s certainly true. This thought is not about rationing devices and the poor in general, but rather it is asking a simple consistency question. The most common market [...]

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I don’t think so, but consider this: a great deal of disruption was thought to have been caused by rapidly falling farm prices in the late 1920s and into the 1930s. Indeed, most of the horrible things done by FDR’s first New Deal involved gruesome attempts to raise farm prices amidst massive unemployment (unlike anything [...]

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Josh Wright reproduced a chart used recently in a piece by David Leonardt. Here is the chart: The article (and chart) is lamenting the fact that healthful foods prices (relative) have been increasing faster than for “unhealthy” calorie dense foods. Folks might be tempted to look at this chart to demonstrate that the relatively high cost of [...]

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Economists have long known that there are often disparities between what a consumer would be willing to pay to purchase a good he has yet to own versus how much he would be willing to accept to part with that same good.  Here is a simple example. Imagine you purchased a delicious box of processed [...]

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I was working up an essay topic the other day in which I wanted to ask my students why they think oil companies catch as much grief as they do when I stumbled upon this chart: What a great chart and what a great touchstone to have students write essays on supply, demand, prices, capital [...]

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In a mostly excellent book from Bill Bryson (At Home) we read the following: Just at this time, sugar prices went into a depression and Beckford ended up uncomfortably exposed to the downside of capitalism (wintercow emphasis added). Falling prices are a signal that the marginal value of a good (in this case sugar) is [...]

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According to the National Research Council of Canada: LEED buildings used 18-39% less energy per floor area than their conventional counterparts.  However, 28-35% of LEED buildings used more energy than their conventional counterparts. I am sure that LEED building standards are favored by the construction and contractor lobbies as such standards raisethe cost of construction. By the [...]

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Once graduation hits and the students go home, I rarely head into my office. Many of my class-notes and books are there, and that is a true cost of not heading in, but I generally really dislike my commute for a whole host of reasons. “Pick up and move!” you might say to me. I’d [...]

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According to the BLS, “law enforcement” is the 12th most dangerous occupation in America. It stands behind garbage collecting, truck driving, farming and ranching and taxi0cab driving. Firefighters are much lower down that list.  Among the policemen, half of all deaths (as regrettable as they are) come from automobile and motorcycle accidents. The point of [...]

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DISCLAIMER: Most of the next 10 days’ posts were written a week or more ago. A few weeks ago this company reported record 2nd quarter revenues of $24.67 billion and record second quarter profits of $5.99 billion. That is $67 million per day of profits! It’s net profit margins were an astounding 24.3% for this [...]

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