Posted in Behavior, Competition, Corporatism, Development, Disingenuous, Environment, ethical foundations, If I Really Hated the Poor ..., Politics, Price System, Special Privilege on Oct 2nd, 2014
It turns out that Californians have successfully made their lives less comfortable by banning plastic bags. As you surely know this is yet another feel good policy that will accomplish almost nothing in the way of real environmental benefits. Now, I have no problem with people making poor choices especially with their own funds, and […]
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I lifted this from the end of my previous post: Why on Earth would anyone be “worried” about this? Prices adjust. Entrepreneurs respond. Unless of course one can’t help but think that everything good in the world comes as a result of conscious policy choices. Drive around Rochester and there are already quite a few […]
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Posted in Central Planning, Price System on May 14th, 2014
I’ll try not to get my readers into the weeds on this question, but I would like to summarize it and make a larger point. First the larger point: this is a real argument. This is to be taken seriously. Waldman is doing here what I though college and academia and serious discussion was supposed […]
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Maybe we’ll get less of this economic nonsense? Here’s the latest from Vox: The simple danger is that monopolies tend to charge high prices. I am sure lay readers don’t see the problem with it. But if I actually put a single question on a Intermediate micro final exam that asked, “what is wrong with this comment?” […]
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I’m writing final exams and hope to be back at this in due time. In the meantime, here was one particularly interesting working paper I had emailed to me today: Discrimination and the Effects of Drug Testing on Black Employment by Abigail K. Wozniak – NBER Working Paper #20095 (LS PE) Nearly half of U.S. employers test job […]
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In this short Youtube clip, author and food activist Michael Pollan argues: Milk will always be the maximum number of paces from the door, and the reason is that most people want to get a quart of milk and they want them to pass as many other things as possible on the way — so […]
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Humans are to electricity like fish are to water … or something close to it. Electricity has become so vital to our lives, yet so reliable, that we hardly think about it, perhaps even as we pay our monthly electricity bills. reflecting on our reliance upon electricity may lead one into a paradox, and it […]
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Good economics recognizes that we do not produce merely for the sake of production, hobbies notwithstanding. In other words, the sole end of all production is consumption. The reason I am in here long before the break of dawn is not really because I particularly love combing through the NBER Working Papers, or that I […]
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Just wanted to update my readers on the amount of greed in the economy. In March of this year, the average retail price of gasoline was $3.85. In the first week of November, the average retail price of gasoline was $3.34. So, I guess gas and oil companies are feeling 13% less greedy these days! […]
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Posted in Price System on Nov 11th, 2013
A former student asked me to re-run this post. You can see why I have few friends now. It’s likely that the main beneficiaries of “Veterans’ Day” and other ways we celebrate Veterans are not the Veterans at all. It is almost surely the government itself (on many dimensions). The dimension I have in mind […]
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