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Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 15 of John M. Ellis’s 2024 book, A Short History of Relations Between Peoples: The change in attitudes to other peoples that has developed between 1500 and modern times has been profound, and it is one of the greatest gifts that modernity has given us. Share Tweet Share Email Print
And Yet Another Open Letter to Oren Cass - Cafe Hayek
TweetOren Cass, Chief Economist American Compass Oren: Your criticism of Phil Gramm’s and Mike Solon’s 2019 Wall Street Journal piece on “It’s a Wonderful Life” misses the point (“The Movie’s Not Called ‘It’s A Wonderful Life Of Economic Freedom,’” December 20). A key part of Messrs. Gramm’s and Solon’s argument is that the standard of […]
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TweetGeorge Will applauds Colleen Shogan, the U.S.’s national archivist, for her refusal to play along with progressives’s effort to lawlessly ‘ratify’ the Equal Rights Amendment. Two slices: The 46 have urged Biden to order Colleen Shogan, the national archivist, whose remit includes publishing and certifying constitutional amendments, to declare the Equal Rights Amendment ratified. If […]
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TweetDavid Henderson patiently explains that some tariffs proposed by Trump “will hurt Americans and Canadians alike.” Two slices: Am I subsidizing Safeway? Why would I ask? Here’s why. My wife and I spend at least $400 a month at Safeway. Safeway doesn’t buy anything from us. So, our monthly trade deficit with Safeway is at […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 326 of Richard Epstein’s magnificent 1995 volume, Simple Rules for a Complex World: Law’s stock in trade is the use of collective might, and the sanctions that it imposes must be reserved for the most serious of social violations – which typically involve using force and not keeping serious contractual engagements. […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 90 of Thomas Sowell’s 1999 book, Barbarians Inside the Gates: Democracy and freedom are too often confounded. DBx: Yes. Democracy is not a synonym for freedom. Nor is democracy a sufficient condition for freedom. Indeed, democracy can be – and sometimes has been – an obstacle to freedom. Whatever the merits […]
The British Were Not Enriched By Mercantilism - Cafe Hayek
TweetA nation no less than a household is made poorer by producing itself those goods and services that it can acquire at lower costs through trade. It is the unenviable lot of the protectionist to try to explain why this reality is untrue. …….. Editor, Yahoo!finance Editor: Michael Gallagher gets much right in his essay […]
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TweetGeorge Will is rightly appalled by the Luddism of Trump and American longshoremen. Two slices: Longshoremen won a tentative 61.5 percent pay increase over six years. The Wall Street Journal editorial page notes “the astounding fact” that there are only about 25,000 port jobs, so about half of ILA members do not have to show […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 22 of Columbia University economist Charles Calomiris’s 2002 monograph, A Globalist Manifesto for Public Policy: Clearly, the great advocates of free international trade did not conceive of its long-term gains merely or primarily as the static efficiency gains of the Ricardian model, but rather as improvements in the ideas and opportunities […]
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TweetJeb Hensarling warns Republicans to take America’s perilous fiscal situation seriously. A slice: Congress should be alarmed. Although the Fed has been cutting rates, bond yields have been rising, and some Treasury auctions this year have been weak. That suggests that bondholders are beginning to question America’s ballooning national debt. They likely have noticed that […]
Why Can't Protectionists Get Straight Even the Most Straightforward of Facts? - Cafe Hayek
TweetIt’s astonishing how oblivious protectionists are to the most basic facts (and, of course, also to economic logic). Editor, American Thinker Editor: Attempting to justify Trump’s tariffs, John Di Leo writes that “our 40-year-long trend of exporting much of our manufacturing and becoming terribly dependent on one specific enemy nation, Red China, has been terribly […]
Trumpian Trade Policy Is At War With Itself - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to someone who disagrees with my recent letter in the Financial Times. Mr. Q__: Thanks for your e-mail. You write that you support Donald Trump’s protectionist trade policies because “they will cure our trade deficit through moving investment to the US and stop job offshoring.” With respect, you – like Mr. Trump […]
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TweetWarren Coats emphasizes the importance of productivity. A slice: In 1900, US income (GDP) was $4,096 per capita in 2023 dollars, while in 2023 it was $81,695. The US poverty rate fell from 56% to 11.1% over the same period. How was such a dramatic increase in our widely shared standard of living possible? The […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 9 of Douglas Irwin’s superb 1996 monograph Three Simple Principles of Trade Policy (link added): [T]he Lerner symmetry theorem … is not just a hypothetical abstraction. If a government undertakes policies that systematically reduce the volume of imports, it also systematically reduces the volume of exports. DBx: Serious question: Why do […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 8 of Alecia Waite Cassidy’s, Edward Tower’s, and Xiaolu Wang’s important September 2016 data-rich paper, “Manufacturing Fetishism: The Neo-Mercantilist Preoccupation with Protecting Manufacturing”: There is no robust positive relationship between manufacturing share [of GDP] and per capita GDP. DBx: This finding will shock – or even be denied – by those […]
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TweetJohn Cochrane asks: “Just how much do ill-constructed regulations cost the US economy?” (HT Ross Levatter) A slice: In this context I found a very interesting tidbit from Mary O’Grady’s coverage of President Milei’s reforms in Argentina. Argentina’s deregulation czar, Federico Sturzenegger…[has] discovered a rough rule of thumb: Where deregulation happens, prices decline in the […]
Tariffs Reduce Not Only A Country's Consumption, but Also Its Production - Cafe Hayek
TweetIn today’s Financial Times is a letter by me correcting some errors committed by Michael Pettis about trade. (I don’t know why the editors put quotation marks around “on net”; I remove these in the version that appears below.) Attempting to demonstrate that tariffs can promote economic growth, Michael Pettis makes an elementary error (“Tariffs […]
Yet Another Example Of The Myopia of the Market - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal: Editor: Left and right, politicians and pundits repeatedly accuse the private sector of being so focused on maximizing today’s profits that government must use tariffs and subsidies if America is to “build the industries of the future.” Your report on Michael Dell belies this accusation (“Michael Dell […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 28 of Matt Zwolinski’s and John Tomasi’s 2023 book, The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism (footnote deleted): Human society is a complex ecosystem, and like all natural ecosystems, it is difficult to manage, much less control. When dealing with complex systems, the attempt to impose […]
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TweetThe Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal rightly criticizes Trump for cozying up to Chairman Xi while dissing Japan, an American ally. A slice: Japan is America’s most important ally in the Asia-Pacific, a bulwark against Chinese aggression. But Mr. Trump wants to block Nippon Steel’s deal to buy U.S. Steel and invest billions […]
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TweetScott Lincicome puts to rest the notion that, but for imports and immigrants, seven million more prime-age American men would be employed. A slice: Contrary to common nationalist claims, it’s simply implausible that there are anywhere close to 7 million working-age American men just itching to jump into the U.S. labor market should future President […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch’s recent essay “How Liberalism Got Hacked“: There’s a great movie from the 1990s—The Usual Suspects. In it, there is a fantastic quote: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.” That is the trick that those on the authoritarian left […]
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TweetSusan Dudley, writing in the Wall Street Journal, urges that DOGE be about more than nothing. Two slices: Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy say they’ll rely on the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024), which overturned an earlier ruling that required courts to defer to agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous statutes. That […]
Mercantilism Is Inevitable Only If Well-Informed People Remain Silent - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal. Editor: Greg Jensen concludes that “we are all mercantilists now, and the implications are profound and unavoidable” (“We Are All Mercantilists Now,” December 13). The implications of the worldwide turn to mercantilism truly are profound, but if enough people resist the fatalism that seems to afflict Mr. […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 130 of the original edition of Walter Lippmann’s sometimes deeply flawed but profoundly insightful and important 1937 book, The Good Society: Thus it has come about that under gradual collectivism the struggle for power has become ever more intense. As men learn that their fortunes depend increasingly upon their political position, […]
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TweetPeter Earle explains that “reform, not revenge, is the path to a freer, fairer healthcare market.” A slice: No sooner did news break of the cold-blooded killer of UnitedHealth Group executive Brian Thompson than an outbreak of immoral preening did, with approval erupting across social media. Supporters of the assassin justified the act with claims […]
And Yet Another Open Letter to Oren Cass - Cafe Hayek
TweetOren Cass Chief Economist American Compass Oren: In your December 9th essay you urge your readers to “amaze” us economists with “one stupid party trick” – namely, to point out to us that manufacturing-worker productivity has turned negative since 2011 (“Here’s How the Return of American Industry Will Actually Look”). You assure your readers that […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from pages 158-159 of Robert Higgs’s excellent 2012 book Delusions of Power: No perceived social or economic problem seemed out of bounds in this cacophonous new political environment [in which LBJ proposed his Great Society]. Faith in the government’s ability to solve social and economic problems reached a new high. Regardless of the […]
Full Text of Gramm and Boudreaux on Trump's Proposed Across-the-Board Tariffs - Cafe Hayek
TweetNow that 30 days have passed since the Wall Street Journal‘s publication of Phil Gramm’s and my piece on Donald Trump’s proposed across-the-board tariffs, I share the full text of that piece here beneath the fold. Trump’s Tariffs Would Smother His Economic Successes A minimum 10% levy on all goods would hike domestic prices, reduce […]
Hayek's Nobel: 50 Years On - Cafe Hayek
TweetTo commemorate the 50th anniversary of the ceremony in Stockholm in which Hayek was awarded the Nobel Prize, the Institute of Economic Affairs has republished Hayek’s Nobel lecture (“The Pretence of Knowledge”), along with three new essays on Hayek. These essays are by (in the order in which they appear) Bruce Caldwell, Peter Boettke, and […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from pages 191-192 of Matt Zwolinski’s and John Tomasi’s 2023 book, The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism (original emphasis): The spectacular improvement [that began with the Industrial Revolution] in the material condition of ordinary people resulted not from any great benefactor or goodwill or solidarity among the […]
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TweetThe Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board ponders “the madness of Luigi Mangioni.” A slice: It’s a dreadful sign of the times that Mr. Mangione is being celebrated in too many places as a worthy avenger instead of an (allegedly) deranged killer. But that is how our culture has degraded—egged on for political purposes or audience […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is this recent Facebook post by Phil Magness: Adorno, Marcuse, Marx et al are not strengths of the far-left. They’re weaknesses, which is also why their followers flip out and retreat into adamant denial whenever somebody shines a light on weird academic sects like CRT, critical pedagogy, & critical theory in general. Most people […]
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TweetWall Street Journal columnist Allysia Finley details the failure of Obamacare – and how this failure reverberates throughout the ‘market’ for health insurance. Two slices: Well, well. Progressives are at last acknowledging that ObamaCare is a failure. They aren’t doing so explicitly, of course, but their social-media screeds against insurers, triggered by last week’s murder […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 21 of Alecia Waite Cassidy’s, Edward Tower’s, and Xiaolu Wang’s excellent September 2016 data-rich paper, “Manufacturing Fetishism: The Neo-Mercantilist Preoccupation with Protecting Manufacturing”: [T]rade restrictions hamper economic growth and manufacturing share, so it makes no sense to use trade restrictions to improve economic growth via the impact of trade restrictions on […]
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Tweet“How painful will Trump’s tariffs be for American businesses?” A slice: If Mr Trump were to slap tariffs on America’s northern and southern neighbours, the impact on American companies would be devastating. Businesses from Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls, to Whirlpool, a home-appliance manufacturer, have factories in Mexico. Around three-fifths of America’s imported aluminium […]
Kuttner's Cluelessness Continues - Cafe Hayek
TweetConstant repetition of fallacies don’t turn them into facts. Editor, New York Review of Books Editor: Robert Kuttner’s favorable review of three pro-protectionist books contains several errors (“The Import of Exports,” Dec. 19). Not the least of these mistakes is his presumption that free(r) trade has – as he quotes Rana Foroohar – “hollowed out” […]
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TweetThe Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal decries the incivility (to put it kindly) of those persons who, mistaking the source of many of the problems that they highlight, are trying to excuse the murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson. A slice: Democrats sold ObamaCare as a panacea for the ills of private insurance, […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 313 of Thomas Sowell’s 2002 collection, Controversial Essays: The strongest argument for socialism is that it sounds good. The strongest argument against socialism is that it doesn’t work. But those who live by words will always have a soft spot in their hearts for socialism because it sounds so good. DBx: […]