Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Government Gone Wild, Regulation on Jan 2nd, 2014
In Klingian Macroeconomics, this episode (it’s more than an episode, we need a better word) is what we mean by the bottom-left quadrant: At midnight on December 31, I not only drank a toast to the new year, but also to finally getting all my business operations out of Ventura County, California. Never have I […]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, If I Really Hated the Poor ..., Politics, Regulation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 9th, 2013
Last week, former CEA Chair and current Harvard economist Greg Mankiw points us to yet another rhetorical flourish by the Commander in Speech: The CEA Fact Checkers Miss One In his speech yesterday, President Obama said, Now, we all know the arguments that have been used against a higher minimum wage. Some say it actually hurts low-wage […]
Posted in Regulation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Sep 20th, 2013
I don’t like to comment too much on the daily politics that makes for much of the news headlines. So, I don’t have anything to offer you here on the ObamaCare vote itself, or the politics of the Syrian problem and so forth. But I am very intrigued by some of the commentary on it. […]
Posted in Regulation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Sep 5th, 2013
Our entire series on Being Removed from Polite Company could be populated with Ronald Coase stories. By now I am sure most readers of TUW would have read something about Coase’s life since he passed away earlier this week, including the story of how both he and James Buchanan (both Nobel Prize winners of economics) […]
Posted in Development, Inequality, Regulation, Resources on Jul 21st, 2013
We’re staying at a condo right now here in the People’s Republic of the Berkshires. It occurs to me that the rich folks who built second homes here might be environmental Heros rather than demons, at least a little. How? These condos use a lot of lumber that was grown for the purpose of building […]
Posted in Regulation on Dec 7th, 2012
My student Alex R. forwards me this absurdity, brought to you by the always worth reading Lenore Skenazy. I wonder where, possibly, people get conditioned to WANT to promote this sort of a thing? Instead of teaching students how to read and add, this is what they are learning. Great. If you’re considering getting a […]
Posted in Behavior, If I Really Hated the Poor ..., Price System, Regulation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 7th, 2012
There are generally three types of discrimination (actually four) that may result in some economic actors being left shorthanded (we can define that in future post, but for now just conjure up the mental image of a worker being paid less than he/she “should”). These are: Employer discrimination: the owners of a firm treat individuals […]
Posted in Environment, Regulation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Nov 17th, 2012
I read an article recently about a grocery chain that has eschewed packaging. Ignore the inconvenience of such things, or the unsanitary nature of such things, or perhaps even the increase in resources that is very likely to result from "saving" on "wasteful" packaging … and consider another controversy that has been much talked about […]
Posted in Regulation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Nov 13th, 2012
… of Our Brains (you know, the instinct part, not the reason part). Here are two propositions that I don’t think stand that comfortably side-by-side, yet I see them discussed regularly by the same people. Proposition #1: If we allow free-trade with other countries (or even within a country), there will be a “race-to-the-bottom” in terms […]
Posted in Central Planning, Institutions, Regulation, Transportation and Infrastructure, Uncategorized on Nov 2nd, 2012
Today continues the Reasonable People series seeking questions and answers on policy that’s desirable in a world not with zero government failure, but rather in a government functioning near the higher end of its realistic range of performance in a high-trust (and highly trustworthy) society. First question today: is there any federal highway spending that a reasonable […]
