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Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 203 of George Will’s 2021 book, American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020 – a collection of many of his columns over these years; (the column from which the quotation below is drawn was originally published in the Washington Post on February 28th, 2010) (original emphasis): It is scientifically sensible […]
They Can Afford It! - Not - Cafe Hayek
TweetIn my latest column for AIER I take on the often-heard argument that hikes in minimum wages will not harm low-skilled workers because rich companies “can afford it.” Two slices: The most obvious error in using the “they can afford it” argument to justify a hike in the minimum wage is that having on hand […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetJeffrey Blehar has an easy and good time poking fun at some of the ‘leaders’ of the pro-Palestine ‘student’ protestors at Columbia. A slice: But they are now entrenched inside the building, have set up camp and barricaded the doors, and are refusing to budge in the face of the threats of expulsion. (Only now, […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetArt Carden correctly identifies tariffs as sanctions that governments impose on their own citizens. A slice: Tariffs on foreign goods are “sanctions” on American consumers. Their crime? Not wanting to pay as much as domestic producers want. Paul Sracic explains that “protectionism won’t save U.S. Steel’s jobs.” A slice: It might be useful for the […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 414 of the 2016 second edition of Thomas Sowell’s important volume Wealth, Poverty and Politics (footnote deleted; link added): This disdain [in Spain] toward those who were economically productive extended to such displays of bigotry as the mass expulsion of Jews in the fifteenth century and of Moriscos in the seventeenth […]
The Reality of Industrial Policy - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal: Editor: We Americans are constantly warned that Beijing is cleverly orchestrating the Chinese economy’s eclipse of America’s – and, thus, Washington must respond in kind. But the recent report by Yoko Kubota and Clarence Leong should calm our fears. Your reporters note that the government in China […]
Bonus Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 103 of the 5th edition (2020) of Douglas Irwin’s excellent book Free Trade Under Fire: There is no such thing as a free lunch. Every government intervention involves a tradeoff of some sort. Higher sugar prices increase employment in sugar production but reduce employment in food-manufacturing industries. Higher semiconductor prices increase […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetTimothy Taylor is understandably unimpressed with the record of that piece of American industrial policy called “the Jones Act.” Two slices: The United States has had an industrial policy aimed at boosting its domestic shipbuilding industry since the passage of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, commonly known as the Jones Act. Whatever the arguments […]
The Case for Free Trade Remains Strong - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to a new reader of my blog: Ms. E__ Thanks for sharing Jeff Ferry’s new piece on some prominent economists – specifically, Angus Deaton, Mario Draghi, Paul Romer, and Janet Yellen – rejecting free trade. I put no stock whatsoever in pronouncements by Draghi and Yellen, for each is now principally a […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 241 of Deirdre McCloskey’s 2024 paper “Market Prices and Wages Do Not Reflect Ethical Value,” which is chapter 19 in The War on Prices: How Popular Misconceptions About Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy (Ryan A. Bourne, ed., 2024): Trades, in economic jargon, are positive sum. Violent coercion, by contrast […]
Beware of the Word "Afford" - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal: Editor: Reporting on California’s recent hike in the minimum wage for workers at fast-food restaurants, you note that “a spokesman for the governor said fast-food companies can afford to give their workers a deserved bump in pay” (“California Fast-Food Chains Are Now Serving Sticker Shock,” April 27). […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 20 of the original edition of Walter Lippmann’s sometimes deeply flawed but profoundly insightful and important 1937 book, The Good Society: No government planned, no political authority directed, the material progress of the past four centuries, or the increasing humanity which has accompanied it. It was by a stupendous liberation of […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetGeorge Will understands why so very many institutions of so-called “higher learning” have become self-spoofing embarrassments. A slice: Given academia’s nearly monochrome culture, most universities have many infantile adults. These are faculty members who have glided from kindergarten through postdoctoral fellowships (these often support surplus PhDs, who are being manufactured faster than the academic job […]
Cafe Hayek is 20 Years Old - Cafe Hayek
TweetApril 2024 – to be precise, April 13th, 2024 – marks the 20th anniversary of Cafe Hayek’s launch. Although Cafe Hayek has been exclusively my blog for several years now, it is not my brainchild. That distinction belongs to Russ Roberts, who was then my colleague in Economics at George Mason University. Russ persuaded me […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 239 of Deirdre McCloskey’s 2024 paper “Market Prices and Wages Do Not Reflect Ethical Value,” which is chapter 19 in The War on Prices: How Popular Misconceptions About Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy (Ryan A. Bourne, ed., 2024): The price of water, or the wage of the academic, is […]
Manufacturing Data - Cafe Hayek
TweetClaims about the “hollowing out” of American manufacturing are as common today as is sand on a beach. But as readers of this blog know, the data as conventionally gathered and reported contradict both the assertion that Americans “don’t make things anymore” and that America’s capacity to produce industrial outputs has been declining for decades. […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetRon Bailey warns that a Greenpeace initiative “will blind and kill children.” A slice: Greenpeace and other anti-biotech activist groups have logged a win in a crusade that could ultimately blind and kill thousands of children annually. How? By persuading the Court of Appeals of the Philippines to issue a scientifically ignorant and morally hideous […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 190 of Jeffrey Clemens’s insightful 2024 paper “Minimum Wage Hikes Bring Tradeoffs Beyond Pay and Jobs,” which is chapter 15 in The War on Prices: How Popular Misconceptions About Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy (Ryan A. Bourne, ed., 2024) (footnote deleted; link added): Several recent studies have found evidence […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetJohn Lott points out some problems with recent statistics on crime. A slice: Another reason crimes reported to the police are falling is that arrest rates are plummeting. If victims don’t believe criminals will be caught and punished, they won’t bother reporting them. According to the FBI, if you take the five years preceding Covid-19 […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 181 of the late Richard Timberlake’s 1998 paper “Gold Standard Policy and Limited Government,” which is chapter 5 of Money and the Nation State (Kevin Dowd & Richard H. Timberlake, Jr., eds., 1998): Commodity money evolved as naturally and as spontaneously as the wheel, the screw, the hydraulic press, the inclined […]
A Dunce Hat for Deese - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to the Washington Post: Editor: Brian Deese apparently thinks that if a proposition is repeated often enough its truth is thereby established regardless of contradictory facts and logic (“China already manufactures too much. Now it wants to make more.” April 25). For example, Mr. Deese worries about the “hollowing out of our […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 227 of Deirdre McCloskey’s insightful 2024 paper “The Labor Theory of Value Is Mistaken,” which is chapter 18 in The War on Prices: How Popular Misconceptions About Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy (Ryan A. Bourne, ed., 2024): But, shockingly, against all this apparent common sense and ethical appeal, the […]
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TweetThe Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board decries the defining-down of free speech on campus. A slice: Columbia’s anti-Israel encampment and protests have included physical intimidation of Jewish students and antisemitic declarations. In October 2023, 100 Columbia professors signed a letter defending students who had flooded the campus in support of Hamas’s “military action” on Oct. […]
Lina Khan Has Mastered Newspeak - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal: Editor: Attempting to defend her agency’s ban on noncompete clauses, FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan proclaims that “robbing people of their economic liberty also robs them of all sorts of other freedoms” (“FTC Bans Noncompete Clauses That Restrict Job Switching,” April 23). Ms. Khan has mastered Newspeak. Noncompete […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetThe Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal decries the ‘progressive’ monoculture on (especially ‘elite’) U.S. campuses – a monoculture that today is increasingly openly antisemitic. Two slices: Many protesters on and near campus wear masks or kaffiyehs to disguise their identities. Students have to walk through a gauntlet to get to class. The protesters […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from pages 342-343 of A. James Meigs’s 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): Advocates of reducing the U.S. trade deficit should realize that doing so […]
Bonus Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 2 of Douglas Irwin’s excellent 1996 monograph Three Simple Principles of Trade Policy: Exports and imports are inherently interdependent, and any policy that reduces one will also reduce the other. DBx: Doug here relates an elementary truth of economics – yet a truth overwhelmingly ignored by pundits and politicians. How many […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from Royall Brandis’s review, in the January 1979 Southern Economic Journal, of Charles Lindblom’s Politics and Markets: The naiveté is really a little sad. It is also a travesty on social science. One feels that the author simply does not comprehend the importance of the ideas of freedom of thought and of the […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetWall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady decries “the Biden-Trump trade war with Mexico.” Two slices: American politicians on both sides of the aisle seem eager to conflate Chinese EV production in Mexico with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. The idea is to denounce anything made in Mexico, as if the U.S.’s southern neighbor and […]
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "Council of Political Enablers" - Cafe Hayek
TweetContinuing to archive here at Cafe Hayek as many as possible of my writings…. In my February 25th, 2014, column for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review I write about my being invited to join the White House Council of Economic Advisors. You can read my column in full beneath the fold. Council of Political Enablers Donald J. […]
Bonus Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is a statement made by my Nobel-laureate emeritus colleague Vernon Smith when he was interviewed recently by National Review‘s Jay Nordlinger: The reason you’re producing something is that someone wants to consume it, and if there’s no consumption, there’s no production. DBx: Indeed. And so when advocates of tariffs and industrial policy assert that […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetGMU Econ alum Dominic Pino puts the recent UAW victory in Tennessee into perspective. A slice: The reason the election is such a big deal is that this same facility in Tennessee voted against UAW representation in 2014 and 2019. Tennessee is a right-to-work state, and without the aid of government coercion to make workers […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 55 of the great economic historian T.S. Ashton’s 1951 paper “The Treatment of Capitalism by Historians,” which is chapter 1 of the 1954 volume edited by Hayek, Capitalism and the Historians: Ignorance of the elements of economic theory led historians to give political interpretations to every favorable trend. In scores of […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetGMU Econ alum Lawrence McQuillan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, explains the latest move to reduce the supply of housing in California. Two slices: One California proposal, Assembly Bill 2584, recently introduced by San Jose Democrat Alex Lee, would establish a quota system, banning “institutional investors that own more than 1,000 single-family homes from […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from pages 34-35 of Tom Palmer’s 2013 essay “The History and Structure of Libertarian Thought,” which is chapter 4 of Why Liberty, an excellent 2013 collection edited by Tom: Complex orders cannot simply be commanded. Language, the market economy, common law, and many other complex forms of coordination among persons unknown to each […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from Leslie Ford’s April 19th, 2011, essay “Paul Revere Sounded the Alarm and At Lexington They Stood”: The colonists understood their obligation to defend their families, their homes, and their town. Fathers and sons, young and old, the men of Lexington were the first to pledge their lives, fortunes and sacred honor. They […]
Bonus Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 716 of the late, great Paul Heyne’s excellent Winter 1983/84 Cato Journal article, “Do Trade Deficits Matter?” (ellipses original to Heyne; footnote deleted): I think Adam Smith was right. “Nothing … can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade.” It is a concept originally devised and […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetWriting in the Wall Street Journal, Glenn Hubbard calls for putting economic growth back on the policy agenda. Two slices: In a campaign season dominated by the past, a central economic topic is missing: growth. Rapid productivity growth raises living standards and incomes. Resources from those higher incomes can boost support for public goods such […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 291 of GMU Econ alum Liya Palagashvili’s superb 2024 paper “Dynamic Pricing Can Benefit Consumers,” which is chapter 24 in The War on Prices: How Popular Misconceptions About Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy (Ryan A. Bourne, ed., 2024): A counterintuitive point here is that sharp price increases associated with […]
Marxist Economics Is Dumb - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal: Editor: You report that, in response to Google’s firing of 28 workers who protested that company’s affiliation with the Israeli government, a spokeswoman for the group that organized the protests said about the firings that “this flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values […]