Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Competition, Health Care on May 16th, 2011
A little over a hundred years ago a considerable number of the mutual aid societies began to offer medical care to their members. The way they did this was to hire a doctor on salary, and he would then provide basic medical services to all of the members of the order. As David Beito tells […]
Posted in Economics Problems, Education on Apr 25th, 2011
I honestly believe that “friends of the market” do more damage to the cause of freedom and markets than the statists. Now, we’ve let Randi Weingarten win the day by calling these market reforms: Market-based reformers advocate using student test scores to evaluate and compensate teachers, increasing the number of charter schools, firing teachers in […]
Posted in Environment on Apr 14th, 2011
No exegesis here, just the thought for your consumption pleasure. Reflect upon the mass of taxes, regulations, welfare interventions, work restrictions, licensing, urban planning, immigration restriction, lack of congestion pricing, limits on Big Box stores, etc. that occurs in the city. Think about how attractive this makes cities relative to suburbs, exurbs and rural areas. […]
Posted in Personal Finance on Apr 8th, 2011
Regular readers probably are aware that I view public education as the single most appalling institution in America. As a result, we send our children to Catholic schools. While I do have some fondness for the type of education the Catholic schools supply, I probably hold the human embodiment of the Catholic church to be […]
Posted in Behavior, Education, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Mar 29th, 2011
A standard argument among behavioralists is that goods that are “positional” in nature cause social welfare losses. What the heck does this mean? There are some goods whose value derives partly (or wholly) from how much you have of it relative to other people. Beauty is a positional good. Speed in a running race is […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 22nd, 2010
Here are a few excerpts from my NBER Working Papers Digest: Robert Inman finds that Stimulus funding for the states is not correlated with state unemployment rates (that doesn’t mean it is not “stimulating” but it certainly makes it less likely): As targeted assistance for stimulating local economies, ARRA funding is uncorrelated with state unemployment […]
Posted in Education, You Can't Have it Both Ways on May 19th, 2010
Wisdom from Don Boudreaux. If teachers (and I agree with them) argue that many forms of merit pay are unreasonable because dozens of things outside of teachers’ control influence learning, then how can supporters of public schooling so vociferously argue about the justice, necessity and value of public schooling itself? How can they justify an […]
Posted in Education on Apr 16th, 2010
Last month, we asked the question of, “can there be a case to provide government schooling in rich neighborhoods?” Regular readers would of course not be surprised to learn that I have concluded “no.” Before you call me a partisan hack, notice that at least I tried to lay out the reasons why I came […]
Posted in ethical foundations on Mar 18th, 2010
As an impressionable boy I thought that climate alarmists, environmental doomsdayers, anti-poverty crusaders, consumer safety crusaders and the like were working hard to make the world a better place. As a middle-aged adult, I have come to hold a slightly different view of these crusaders – that they really don’t give a damn about the […]
Posted in Education, Market Failures on Mar 8th, 2010
Diane Ravitch writes in tomorrow’s WSJ about her conversion away from national testing standards and charter schools: What we need is not a marketplace, but a coherent curriculum that prepares all students. And our government should commit to providing a good school in every neighborhood in the nation, just as we strive to provide a […]
