Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Paternalism, Unintended Consequences, Welfare State on Dec 2nd, 2010
Fatherhood.gov. It’s a effort of NRFC, which is a division of ACF which is an office of OFA which is a branch of HHS, which of course is a department of the Executive branch of the USA. Phew. Now that we have that out of the way. Here is what it does: NRFC Activities The […]
Posted in Socialism, Unintended Consequences, Welfare State on Aug 11th, 2010
The “common-good” is commonly invoked as a justification for all kinds of confiscatory taxation and subsequent government programs. But in what sense is any program actually working for the “common good?” Wouldn’t making such a claim as a defense of a program require at least two things to be defined? First is, what the heck […]
Posted in Unintended Consequences on Jul 23rd, 2010
From the AP: Some major health insurance companies will no longer issue certain types of policies for children, an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law, state officials said Friday. Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said several big insurers in his state will stop issuing new policies that cover children individually. Oklahoma […]
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, Unintended Consequences, Welfare State on Apr 27th, 2010
There are NO recorded Asian undergraduates disabled by ADD, and only 0.7 percent of Asian students have a learning disability, according to government data. Read the excellent Pope Center study on student disabilities here. I’ve been teaching since 2002 (with a two year hiatus). I have taught in aggregate probably around 2,500 students. I’ve probably […]
Posted in Unintended Consequences, Welfare State on Oct 23rd, 2009
… is that they sometimes kill their prey. Gov. David Paterson warned Thursday that New York could lose $1 billion under the Obama administration’s decision to cut executive pay at seven companies that received federal bailout money. “I’m not going to defend the people who run these companies,” Paterson said. “They frittered a lot of […]
Posted in Price System, Unintended Consequences on Oct 12th, 2009
There might be some empirical gymastics here (I did not read the paper), but this kind of study is one reason I find economics fun. We find that reductions in traffic congestion generated by E-ZPass reduced the incidence of prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2km of a toll plaza by 10.8% and […]
Posted in Unintended Consequences on Oct 2nd, 2009
I have anywhere between 250 and 400 students in my courses each semester. A good number of them (apx 20 students) have documented learning disabilities. Now I have no way of knowing what these disabilities are, for privacy reasons, so I am not able to figure out teaching strategies to help these students do well […]
Posted in Environment, Unintended Consequences on Sep 3rd, 2009
Yesterday I wrote a little bit about the unintended health costs from the Cash for Clunkers program. Today I want to look on an overlooked environmental cost of the program. In the course of unfettered market activity what you would see is that as gas and oil prices increased, consumers would respond to these higher […]
Posted in Environment, Regulation, Unintended Consequences on Sep 2nd, 2009
You know, that silly little idea that gave states some autonomy from despotic central government rule? I just read an Oped in the WSJ citing how a (federal) EPA ruling on the Endangered Species Act has had the (yet again) unintended consequence of helping thousands of California farmers into a severe drought. Aside from the […]
