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 Education, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Mar 10th, 2008
A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.
The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.
…
The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that California law requires parents […]
Posted in Politics, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Mar 7th, 2008
The political class in Chicago has now made the city the first and only in America where the cumulative sales tax rate exceeds 10%. That seems an awfully strange thing to do in a city where over 21% of the measured population lives under the poverty line (according to the American Community Survey). One of […]
Posted in You Can't Have it Both Ways on Feb 20th, 2008
It is understandable that some people are concerned about state and local governments selling government owned (i.e. commons) property to private companies and investors. Recent examples include roads in Chicago and proposals to sell the Golden Gate Bridge and other properties. While I believe these deals make a great deal of economic sense, and will […]
Posted in Taxation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Feb 4th, 2008
An old student asked me a simple question regarding tax incidence and it got me to thinking …
Let’s talk about payroll and income taxes. The economic incidence (who actually bears the burden of a tax) is a function of the elasticity of demand for labor (with respect to wages - actually, total compensation including non-pecuniary […]
Posted in You Can't Have it Both Ways on Jan 30th, 2008
Jason Furman and Steven Landsburg are having an econ-celebrity death match over at the LA Times. My favorite salvo to date:
It seems fundamentally unfair to say that we’ll help you out with an expensive stimulus package if you lost your job this month, but we’ll foot you with the bill for that package if you […]
Posted in Classical Liberalism, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Jan 28th, 2008
One of the most amusing things about living in Western Massachusetts, perhaps the least freedom friendly place in the United States, is how serious people take their politics. It is a way of life here, something by which people define themselves. Deval Patrick wins the governorship - people literally dance in the streets; George Bush […]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Jan 16th, 2008
The “buy local” literature is littered with doozies. Here are two more.
Small business is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.
Prevent multi-national big box stores from entering your town … because it will extract monopoly rents from us.
You can get a flavor for some of these arguments here and here. […]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Extended Order, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Jan 15th, 2008
One of the common reasons individuals in certain communities give us to “buy local” is that buying local will cut out the “middleman” (you know, the evil merchants and traders, reviled since biblical times) and enable growers to focus on other things. These same individuals then launch a marketing effort to have us joining Community […]
Posted in You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 30th, 2007
From Becker and Posner:
the most sophisticated banks and investment companies, including Merrill Lynch, Citibank, and Morgan Stanley, have written down their housing investments by billions of dollars. No one can reasonably claim that these banks lacked the skills and knowledge to evaluate all the terms of, or the likelihood of repayment, on the subprime […]
Posted in Politics, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 18th, 2007
Presidential candidates are likely to gain lots of popular votes with a class-warfare rhetoric which include proposals to increase taxes only on the richest in society (about $200,000 of income per year). But, these same candidates when in Congress and the Senate simply cannot help but lavishing billions of dollars on tax payers making far […]
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