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Oren Cass Continues to Err - Cafe Hayek
TweetOren Cass continues to err on both the facts and the economics. Editor, The Harvard Gazette Editor: About the recent presentation on your campus by Oren Cass of American Compass, you write (“How free-market policymakers got it all wrong for decades,” November 19): As evidence that the free-market era has failed to deliver for the […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 148 of the late Nobel-laureate economist W. Arthur Lewis’s 1955 book, The Theory of Economic Growth: These innovators are always a minority. New ideas are first put into practice by one or two or very few persons, whether they be new ideas in technology, or new forms of organization, new commodities, […]
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TweetPhil Magness and GMU Econ alum Alexander William Salter, writing at The Hill, rightly criticize the influence on the Biden administration of the nonsense that is “modern monetary theory.” A slice: For the unfamiliar, modern monetary theory is a fringe school of economic thought arguing that the federal government, as the sole issuer of legal […]
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TweetGeorge Will urges the U.S. Senate to perform its Constitutional – and ethical – duty. A slice: Matt Gaetz, an arrested-development adolescent with the swagger of a sequined guitarist in a low-rent casino, will not be confirmed. His grotesqueness, however, makes three other nominees seem what they are not: acceptable. Considering only competence — leaving […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 33 of Randy Holcombe’s 2023 paper “Untangling Political Economy,” which is chapter 2 of The Legacy of Richard E. Wagner (Peter J. Boettke and Christopher J. Coyne, eds., 2023): The big difference, however, is that market entities deal with each other only through voluntary transactions, so both sides must agree that […]
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TweetMy intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, talks with Samuel Gregg about “the evolving landscape of conservative thought.” What if the DOGE were run by Arnold Kling? Scott Lincicome explains “what Biden and Harris got wrong on inflation.” Two slices: Plenty of other data points and anecdotes all come to the same conclusion: Even though inflation has […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 81 of Thomas Sowell’s 1999 book, Barbarians Inside the Gates: Once we face up to the plain fact that Social Security is welfare for the elderly, then we need to ask ourselves why affluent people of any age should be a burden on others. They should not be. Share Tweet Share […]
Bob Ekelund Remembered - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s my just-published remembrance, in Public Choice, of my late teacher, dissertation advisor, co-author, and friend, Bob Ekelund. Three slices: The only textbook assigned for the course was Milton Friedman’s Price Theory. From some younger members of Auburn’s economics faculty, I heard a few cocktail-lubricated complaints that core theory courses in a modern economics Ph.D. […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 17 of Milton Friedman‘s 1976 paper “Adam Smith’s Relevance for 1976,” which is Chapter 1 of Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations: Bicentennial Essays 1776-1976, edited by Fred R. Glahe (link added): The market, with each individual going his own way, with no central authority setting social priorities, avoiding duplication, […]
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TweetMy colleague Bryan Caplan is always insightful. Two slices: In my eyes, every election is a trainwreck. Two proudly irrational tribes rally behind two self-congratulatory demagogic mediocrities as if they were the Second Coming. Listening to any “serious” candidate speak is torture. It’s like sitting in on the class presentations of C students, knowing that […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 29 of Kevin O’Rourke’s and Jeffrey Williamson’s 1999 book, Globalization and History (original emphasis): All of the commodity market integration in the Atlantic economy after the 1860s was due to the fall in transport costs between markets, and none was due to more liberal trade policy. In contrast, most of the […]
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TweetRoger Meiners and Andy Morriss argue for regulating colleges like businesses. A slice: Colleges are strategic in their behavior of selling services. Regardless of colleges’ legal status, they behave like competitive enterprises, not passive state agencies or charities passing out benefits to selected beneficiaries. To increase the appearance of selectivity, schools encourage students to apply […]
Yanis Varoufakis Is Mistaken Both In Fact and In Theory - Cafe Hayek
TweetUnHerd usually publishes good stuff. But this piece by Varoufakis is a joke. Editor, UnHerd Editor: Yanis Varoufakis is right to be skeptical of Trump’s proposed tariffs, yet nearly everything else in his essay is wrong (“Can Donald Trump’s tariffs fix America? He’ll have to ditch the financiers first,” Nov. 12). Here are two examples. […]
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TweetGMU Econ alum Dominic Pino, responding to an economically naive report in Politico, explains what shouldn’t – but, alas, what desperately does – need explaining: “the existence of concentrated benefits does not justify dispersed costs.” A slice: By “traditional economic models” here, they mean, roughly, actual economics, as opposed to magical thinking where we can […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 339 of A. James Meigs’s excellent Fall 1988 Cato Journal paper, “Dollars and Deficits: Substituting False for Real Problems,” as this paper appears as chapter 14 of Dollars, Deficits, & Trade (James A. Dorn and William A. Niskanen, eds., 1989): [T]he political system now permits an industry to extract costs of […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from pages 245-246 of the original edition of Walter Lippmann’s sometimes deeply flawed but profoundly insightful and important 1937 book, The Good Society: The problem that perplexed the liberals arose from the fact that they had very good reason for feeling that nobody – no king, no parliament, no collection of voters, and […]
On Trump's Proposed Across-the-Board Tax Hike - Cafe Hayek
TweetIn today’s Wall Street Journal, Phil Gramm and I make the case against Trump’s proposal to impose across-the-board tariffs higher taxes on American consumers as well as producers, many of whom import raw materials and component parts. Two slices: After Mr. Trump’s regulatory and tax relief boosted real economic growth from 1.8% in 2016 to […]
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TweetThe Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board rightly criticizes Trump’s nomination of the odious Matt Gaetz to be U.S. Attorney General. Two slices: This is a bad choice for AG that would undermine confidence in the law. Mr. Trump lauded Mr. Gaetz’s law degree from William and Mary, but it might as well be a doctorate […]
"China!" Isn't An Incantation - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a note to a long-ago undergraduate student of mine: Eric: Thanks for your feedback on Phil Gramm’s and my piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. Your main criticism is that we “don’t address the China danger.” We don’t address this danger because it’s not the principal reason that motivates Trump’s protectionism. Trump is a […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 134 of Thomas Sowell’s 2008 volume, Economic Facts and Fallacies: Concern over poverty is often confused with concern over differences in income, as if the wealth of the wealthy derives from, and is the reason for, the poverty of the poor. But this is just one of the many forms of […]
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TweetArnold Kling understands that most manufacturing jobs of the sort that people such as Oren Cass and Donald Trump lament being lost are ones that few Americans today would want to hold. Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn ponders “the Democrats’ religion.” A slice: In 1985 centrists led by Al From of the Democratic Leadership […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 264 of economist Christopher Meissner’s 2024 book, One from the Many: The Global Economy Since 1850 (footnote deleted; links added): Since the 1990s, new research has repeatedly shown that market integration and liberalization of product and factor markets serve to raise GDP per capita. In an early study, Jeffrey Sachs and […]
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TweetSamuel Gregg writes about Tocqueville’s economic mind. A slice: Economic topics were on Tocqueville’s mind from the moment he stepped ashore in America. For one thing, he immediately noticed how frantically Americans pursued wealth. In a May 28 letter to his brother Edouard, Tocqueville wrote, “The profound passion, the only one which profoundly stirs the […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 656 of the 1988 collection of Lord Acton’s writings and notes to himself (edited by the late J. Rufus Fears), Essays in Religion, Politics, and Morality; specifically, it’s a note drawn from Acton’s extensive papers at Cambridge University: We contemplate our ideas in the sunlight of heaven, and apply them in […]
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TweetWall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady breaks this news to progressives: “There’s no such thing as the Latino vote.” Two slices: The human desire to be part of a group is real. Small tribes whose members have a lot in common may be prone to vote as one. But the larger groups get, the […]
The Irony - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a sentence from Scott Bessent’s recent Wall Street Journal essay titled “Markets Hail Trump’s Economics“: Mr. Trump’s election drove the largest single-day increase in the U.S. dollar in more than two years, and third largest in the last decade. I’m confident that, if Trump reads Bessent’s line – which is meant to be laudatory […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 267 of Thomas Sowell’s 1999 book, Barbarians Inside the Gates: It is one of the pathetic signs of the “me generation” that some people think it is a defense of some government policy to say, “I benefitted from it.” Nazis benefitted from Hitler! DBx: Yep. I cannot count the number of […]
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TweetEric Boehm details some of the projected costs of Trump’s proposed tariffs. Two slices: Whether passed through Congress or enacted with the stroke of a presidential pen, higher tariffs will ultimately fall on American consumers. A new report this week by the National Retail Federation, a trade association that represents grocers, department stores, and online […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 312 of Gordon Wood’s splendid 2009 volume, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815: In no country in the world did public opinion become more awesome and powerful than it did in increasingly democratic America. DBx: Ideas do matter. The way we talk does matter. What is taught […]
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TweetJuliette Sellgren talks with David Henderson about this year’s newly minted Nobel laureates in economics. My GMU Econ and Mercatus Center colleague Tyler Cowen, writing at Bloomberg, explains that Trump’s proposed tariffs will not work as Trump and many other protectionists suppose they will work. Two slices: Trump has promised to impose stiff tariffs of […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from Milton and Rose Friedman’s October 1997 Hoover Digest essay, “The Case for Free Trade”: Few measures that we could take would do more to promote the cause of freedom at home and abroad than complete free trade. Instead of making grants to foreign governments in the name of economic aid – thereby […]
On My Siblings' Politics - Cafe Hayek
TweetIn my latest column for AIER I explain why my three, dear siblings voted for Trump. A slice: My siblings naturally think of themselves as adults. They despise politicians, celebrities, and journalists treating them as children who both need and crave parental coddling and discipline. Listening to my brothers and sister talk about Kamala Harris, […]
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TweetElizabeth Nolan Brown anticipates the joy of bidding good riddance to Lina Khan. Even before being appointed FTC Chair, Khan was one of the leaders of a strange—and often infuriating—school of thought about antitrust law. Known as neo-Brandeisians, new structuralists, or sometimes (by critics) as “hipster antitrust,” this school dismissed the idea that antitrust’s purpose […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from pages 112-113 of the 1947 “Crofts Classics” edition of John Stuart Mill’s 1859 On Liberty: The third, and most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government, is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government, causes its influence over hopes […]
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TweetBob Graboyes riffs on “the thrill of victimy and the agony of DEIfeat.” The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board is correct: “Voters on Tuesday repudiated the results of progressive policies.” A slice: The defeat was less a resounding endorsement of Mr. Trump than a repudiation of progressive governance. America rejected the consequences of left-wing policies. […]
Workers Lose - Cafe Hayek
TweetThis morning I listened on NPR to an economically naive report titled “Workers scored wins in the election — including in business-friendly red states.” Even before the NPR host turned the spot over to the reporter, I knew that a more accurate title for the report would be “Workers suffer losses in the election — […]
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TweetThe Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal reflects on the outcome of the 2024 U.S. elections. A slice: Mr. Biden veered left to unite Democrats, rather than unite the country, and he believed the historians (that means you, Jon Meacham) who told him he could be another FDR. He put Elizabeth Warren in charge […]
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TweetWriting in the Wall Street Journal, Brad Raffensperger and Deidre Henderson make the case that fraudulence surrounding America’s polling places is rare. Two slices: As Republican chief election officials, we care deeply about the integrity of our elections. It should be easy to vote and hard to cheat. Americans heading to the polls should know […]