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The US economy has never had a soft landing. It is possible that we are about to have one. If so, it will likely be due to the fact that a massive surge in immigration has provided a big soft pillow for the economy to land on. [Note: I will not address the question of […]
In this Future of Liberty discussion, Governor Mitch Daniels interviews Philip Hamburger, legal scholar and founder of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, about the administrative state. The two agree that federal agencies have committed at least two sets of sins. First, they have unduly and unnecessarily violated the rights of citizens, and second they have […]
This is part two of three-part series. In part one of this series, I discussed different kinds of inequality and which ones we should be concerned about. You can find part one on Understanding Inequality here and part three on Declining Inequality here. Part 2: Measuring Inequality Adam Smith was well aware that money […]
For all those who have taken an economics course, you’ve no doubt heard plenty about market failure. I suspect you’ve heard relatively less about government failure. Part of the allure of the public choice tradition for me has always been its very clear explication of the latter. But in this episode, leave it to perennial […]
Should we want the greatest good for the greatest number? (And, incidentally, should the “we” mean a numerical majority?) The Trolley problem in philosophy raised the issue. I was reminded of that in an interesting article by economist and philosopher Michael Munger, “Adam Smith Discovered (and Solved!) the Trolley Problem” (June 28, 2023), as well […]
I was talking with a fellow tennis player during a break in a game. I’m at my cottage in Canada, and we play 3 on 3, which sounds weird but is a real kick. He told me that he’s a socialist progressive and said that his beef with capitalism is the inequality it creates. […]
My attention was recently drawn to a headline declaring that Washington, the state I grew up in, would no longer require aspiring lawyers to pass the bar exam in order to become practicing lawyers. I did a bit of reading on the subject and it turns out this decision was motivated by DEI concerns: During […]
In Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman warned that heavy government involvement in the economy would reduce our freedom. Friedrich Hayek made a similar argument in The Road to Serfdom. I have always found this argument to be plausible, but at times I’ve wondered if it is truly persuasive. Throughout my life, European governments have been […]
This is part one of three-part series. Over the past two and a half centuries, the world has seen significant progress. People live longer, are richer and better educated, and enjoy greater political freedom. (I previously explored the role of cities as engines of such progress for the Liberty Fund’s AdamSmithWorks project). But has that […]
Does parenting make you a better person? Can it improve your life? Neuroscientist Erik Hoel makes the self-interested case for parenting arguing that it makes you less jaded and more heartbroken (in a good way) for how you experience the world. Listen as new father Hoel speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the universal […]
Occupational licensing today directly affects more than one in five workers in the United States—up from one in 20 workers in the 1950s. This is nearly twice the fraction of workers belonging to a union and more than 15 times the fraction of workers receiving the federal minimum wage. Although licensing is widespread in […]
Whether the accusations of sexual harassment and racism levied against the World Economic Forum (WEF) are true or false, they teach some lessons. It is worth reading the investigation report of the Wall Street Journal (Shalini Ramachandran and Khadeeja Safdar, “Behind Davos, Claims of a Toxic Workplace,” WSJ, June 29, 2024) and its follow-up (“World […]
A recent article in the OC Register discussed a $150 million house for sale in southern Orange County: A rare 42-acre San Juan Capistrano estate known for decades as “Porcupine Hill” has hit the market for the first time for $150 million. . . . Marketed as “Casa Grande,” the estate includes an existing 21,000-square-foot […]
Is Driving in California Subsidized? by Marc Joffe, Cato at Liberty, July 16, 2024. Excerpt: To determine whether the government is still subsidizing California drivers today, Krit Chanwong and I reviewed a variety of local, state, and federal disclosures for the 2022–2023 fiscal year. We used actual figures when available but were sometimes obliged to […]
Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way: nothing will ever be “adequately funded.” In pretty much any circumstance, someone somewhere will have at least some idea of what else they could do with an extra dollar or two. The fact that they have to forsake something because they have limited resources means […]
[An update of Occupational Licensing, by David S. Young.] Occupational licensing today directly affects more than one in five workers in the United States—up from one in 20 workers in the 1950s. This is nearly twice the fraction of workers belonging to a union and more than 15 times the fraction of workers receiving the […]
In a recent interview with Tyler Cowen, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz stated his opposition to housing deregulation: One person’s freedom is another person’s unfreedom. That means that what I can do . . . I talk about freedom as what somebody could do, his opportunity set, his choices that he could make. And when one person […]
In recent years, I’ve become depressed by the state of research in macroeconomics. I find many new research papers to be almost unreadable. Perhaps this reflects the fact that my own work is increasingly outside the mainstream. Thus I was very pleasantly surprised to see a new paper by Tom Holden that embraces many of […]
This is the second of my series of posts on Jonathan Lipow’s 2023 book, Pubic Policy for Progressives. In “Economics without Apology,” a subsection of Chapter 1, Jonathan addresses his concern about progressives rejecting economics, writing: Now, lamentably, many progressives regard economics with great suspicion. Indeed, instinctual hostility towards economics is a textbook example of […]
There are credible theories, bolstered by the public choice analysis of bureaucracy, that the administrative state is economically inefficient and politically dangerous—“politically dangerous” meaning a risk of growing or feeding Leviathan. (For an overview, see Gordon Tullock, Bureaucracy, Liberty Fund, Inc., 2004]; and Dennis C. Mueller, Perspectives on Public Choice [Cambridge University Press, 1997].) At […]
At its core, the Woke are building a movement that subverts the Left and renders it impotent in the face of its very real theocratic and fascist enemies. It sets male against female, straight and cis-gendered against queer, Black against white, and the working class against the intelligentsia. It debases science with various offshoots […]
If you read the supplemental material to which I link with the diligence I expect and require, dear reader (tongue is firmly in cheek here!), you will have read this paper I referenced that examines proposed symmetry breakers between the modal ontological argument for the existence of god and the reverse modal ontological argument against […]
In a previous post, I argued that more than 100% of the inflation since late 2019 has been demand side. There were some adverse supply shocks around 2021-22 that led to significant inflation, but there have also been major positive supply shocks (notably immigration) that have tended to depress inflation. In net terms, the cumulative […]
In just about any economics textbook, one will find a discussion of market failure. The conversation will usually go something like this: markets are great, but sometimes they fail. If transaction costs are low, then no government remedy is needed. But if transaction costs are high, then the government can (and should) step in to […]
International trade, it is commonly said, has winners and losers. Consumers in the U.S. gain when they buy wine imported from France while winemakers in California lose. C’est la vie, counsel economists. Nothing should be done about this situation. The reason is that it’s also commonly said – at least among those of us in […]
In his “Quotation of the Day” yesterday, one of my favorite parts of CafeHayek, Don Boudreaux quotes from one of my favorite articles by Hayek, his “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” published in the American Economic Review in 1945. (Parenthetical note: Wouldn’t it be great if the AER started publishing articles with words […]
Here, I call on EconLog readers to try to change my mind! Let me start this out with a proverbial throat-clearing on what we all know are the well-worn difficulties of changing someone’s mind. Doing so is often very difficult, and people are reluctant to change their mind. And we’re all biased to believe we […]
What lessons can we take from the speeches of Abraham Lincoln for today’s turbulent times? How did those speeches move the nation in Lincoln’s day? Listen as political scientist Diana Schaub of Loyola University, Maryland talks with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about three of Lincoln’s most important speeches and what they can tell us about the […]
There have been numerous news reports suggesting that China’s economy is in the doldrums. Strong exports have allowed China to maintain a solid overall growth rate, but that growth engine may not be sustainable, especially given the likelihood of increasingly protectionist headwinds. Domestic sectors such as housing and retail sales have been fairly weak. Here […]
First, Happy Bastille Day. Now to some highlights. Reliable Sources: How Wikipedia Admin David Gerard Launders His Grudges Into the Public Record Tracing Woodgrains, July 10, 2024. Excerpt: Unsurprisingly, Gerard’s slash-and-burn, no-questions-asked policy has led to more than a few conflicts on Wikipedia. Editors who object to his indiscriminate removals have raised the issue multiple […]
The Wall Street Journal’s report on the reduced increase of the Consumer Price Index is confused. Or so would think an economist who understands the difference between changes in relative prices and a change in the general price level, of all prices together. (See “Milder Inflation Opens Door Wider to September Rate Cut,” July 11, […]
Imagine if you were born overseas but grew up in America. After graduating from college, you start looking for a job. There’s just one problem; you do not have legal residency. As a result, the US government sends you back to your home country, a place you might not even remember. To many people, this […]
Alan Reynolds writes: Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation has been zero for two months. Over the past 12 months, prices of food at home are up 1.1 percent, and energy prices are up 1 percent. Yet headlines keep focusing on the 12-month averages of 3 percent for the total CPI and 3.3 percent for “core […]
A report in the New Yorker (and discussed in an NPR Marketplace segment) discusses restaurant table reservations, showing how third-party sellers are earning money by reserving tables at trending restaurants and reselling them to eager diners. These “hustlers” and “mercenaries” as they have been named (and self-named) might be seen, even by themselves, as jacking […]
I recently posted about two broad lenses one could use to analyze political activism. One form is what I called “activism as production,” which occurs when activists are motivated by a desire to help produce some form of public good – better environmental health, an improved justice system, and so on. The other form is […]
As formalized by Mancur Olson in his seminal 1971 book The Logic of Collective Action, smaller social groups are easier to organize than larger ones. Consequently and other things equal, a small group will be more effective at lobbying governments, even if the total benefits of its members are smaller than what all the members […]
I imagine that most readers don’t spend a great deal of time thinking about the practice of nepotism. In this post, I won’t try to convince you that nepotism is good or bad, rather I’ll try to show that nepotism provides a useful entry point to thinking about contemporary trends in the politics of many […]
There’s a thought I’ve had rolling around in my head for a while that a recent post by Scott Sumner helped bring into focus. He argued there can sometimes be a failure to understand and appreciate how people might think in fundamentally different ways from you, and how this can lead to political polarization. As […]
It is a common misconception that competitive markets yield efficient outcomes. While competition can spur increased effort, that effort need not be directed toward anything productive. More competition has a dark side as well—the tendency to produce unnecessary duplication of efforts and waste. That competition can be problematic rather than efficient is an idea today […]
I often hear people on the right suggest that the New York Times is a lousy newspaper. This is not true, as they are confusing quality and bias. The NYT is an excellent newspaper that is marred by an unfortunate bias toward left wing views. Someone once joked that they were not a libertarian because […]