News
Entertainment
Science & Technology
Life
Culture & Art
Hobbies
News
Entertainment
Science & Technology
Culture & Art
Hobbies
Learning to Think Like Someone Else (with David Marquet) - Econlib
Former submarine commander David Marquet joins EconTalk’s Russ Roberts to explore how distancing–thinking like someone else, somewhere else, or sometime else–can unlock better choices in business and life. They talk about leadership without giving orders, how to empower teams, and what it means to see yourself as a coach rather than a boss. Along the way, they discuss […]
My Weekly Reading for August 10, 2025 - Econlib
Child Protective Services Investigated Her 4 Times Because She Let Her Kids Play Outside by Lenore Skenazy, Reason, August 9, 2025. Excerpt: During this visit, the social services worker acknowledged that our home was clean, that the children were happy, well-fed, polite, and well-spoken, but said the children had to be supervised 100 percent […]
Constitutional Tradeoffs - Econlib
Co-blogger Pierre Lemieux’s recent post “Can a Constitution Limit the State?” (July 21, 2025) poses an important question, one political theorists have wrestled with for millennia. In the comments section of that post, I linked to a recent paper in the Journal of Institutional Economics by Jacek Lewkowicz, Jan Falkowski, Zimin Lou, and Olga Marut (henceforth […]
Interesting Facts About the Cocoa Market - Econlib
I found many interesting points in a recent Financial Times story about cocoa beans, the main ingredient of chocolate: see Susannah Savage, Chocolate Cartels: The Rise of Cocoa Smuggling, August 2, 2025. The first set of facts relates to the great “deals” that the states of Ghana and Ivory Coast made with their cocoa farmers. […]
Jagdish Bhagwati on Protectionism - Econlib
With all the discussion of free trade, tariffs, and non-tariff barriers, I decided to pick up and quickly skim a short, delightful book by trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati. It’s his 1988 book, titled simply Protectionism. I wrote a short review of the book in the June 5, 1989 issue of Fortune. One of the issues, […]
Equality Before the Law, Equality of Permission, and the Language of Libertarianism - Econlib
When we communicate with one another, how we say things can sometimes be as important as what we actually say. Words matter, which is even more true when we exchange ideas and try to convince others to embrace our viewpoints. Ideological rhetoric, then, merits some thought on the part of libertarians. Of course, libertarians uphold […]
We Have Never Been Woke Part 4: Why Are Symbolic Capitalists Woke? - Econlib
This is the fourth part of my exploration of Musa al-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been Woke. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). As we’ve seen, al-Gharbi spends a good deal of time establishing the demographic of people who are most likely to end up being “woke” as he described the term. And that group is overwhelmingly skewed […]
F.A Hayek: Education Is an Obligation, Not a Right - Econlib
Friedrich A. Hayek Is there a right to education? Even in today’s polarized political environment in the United States, the overwhelming majority of citizens think there is such a right, and many hold that it applies through the completion of college.1 Every one of the fifty state constitutions includes language providing for free public education, […]
Laffer Curve in the United Kingdom? - Econlib
The FT has an interesting story on the British government’s attempt to boost capital gains tax revenue: The UK’s efforts to increase revenues from capital gains tax have backfired, with receipts plummeting in the wake of big cuts in allowances. The government’s CGT take fell 18 per cent from the previous year to £12.1bn in […]
Taxing the Rich: It's Complicated - Econlib
After months of debate, and substantial changes along the way, this summer Congress successfully enacted a landmark package of tax and spending cuts, a key component of Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. Trump’s “big beautiful bill” (HR 1) will reduce taxes by around $4.5 trillion while also cutting roughly $1.5 trillion in federal spending. It is […]
Accounting Identities and Economic Theories - Econlib
The relationship between accounting identities and economic models is frequently misunderstood. An accounting identity is an equality that must be true, by definition. It is tautology. It is meant to categorize and organize relationships between variables. For example Assets = Liabilities is an identity. Regardless what “assets” equals, “liabilities” must be the same amount. We […]
The Cost of Building Progress - Econlib
Book Review of: Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress–and How to Bring It Back by Marc J. Dunkelman,1; and Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.2 Vera Coking and the Cost of Progress In 1961, Vera Coking and her husband purchased a home in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They paid $20,000 for the modest three-story […]
Who Got the Biggest Percentage Tax Cuts? - Econlib
The answer may surprise you. In so much of the discussion of tax cuts, whether of the recent one or previous tax cuts, we hear that the highest-income people got the biggest tax cuts. Of course, they did. They pay a disproportionately high percent of overall federal taxes. So it shouldn’t be surprising that they […]
Sorts of Deals - Econlib
A deal is an agreement to exchange something for some consideration, but different sorts of deals exist. A deal is not necessarily a free exchange and a free exchange is not necessarily a free-market exchange. The gold standard of all deals is a free-market exchange: a voluntary exchange where alternative demanders and suppliers exist. The […]
We Have Never Been Woke Part 3: Symbolic Capital and Symbolic Capitalists - Econlib
The previous post in this series touched on Musa al-Gharbi’s identification of a class of people as “symbolic capitalists,” his contention that wokeness is the dominant ideology of this group, and that members of this group tend to be most predisposed to amplifying woke ideas. There are multiple “alternative names for symbolic capitalists” used by […]
Diocletian, the Roman Empire, and Forever Failing Price Controls - Econlib
The Roman Empire was in trouble. During the fifty-plus years known as the Crisis of the Third Century (235-284 AD), the throne of Rome changed some 26 times, with the Roman Army engaging in a steady diet of crowning and removing claimants to the throne. These autocrats, known as “barracks emperors,” because they often came […]
We Have Never Been Woke Part 2: Of "We" and "Wokeness" - Econlib
At the end of my last post, I said I’d be following up by describing both some of Musa al-Gharbi’s modes of analysis and assumptions in his book We Have Never Been Woke, and outline who is the “we” he describes, and what he means by “woke.” First, the ground rules. Musa al-Gharbi sets out […]
We Must Stop Saying "Must" - Econlib
In my first year of grad school, one of my professors had a long list of “forbidden words”. These were terms that do more to confuse than enlighten when used in economic analysis. Terms like “need”, “afford”, “exploits”, “vicious circle”, etc. Today, I’ll argue that we might wish to add the term “must” to that […]
Joshua Rauh on Federal Spending, Tax Revenue, Economic Growth, and Deficits - Econlib
On July 26, Joshua Rauh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, testified at the Reagan Library before the House Ways and Means Committee. I learned a lot from his testimony and want to share it. Here are some highlights. A growing economy is essential for expanding economic opportunity for all Americans. It is deeply […]
Eminent Domain and the Problem of Government - Econlib
In our forthcoming paper at the Review of Law & Economics, “The Long-Term Impact of Kelo v. City of New London: Comparing State Legislative and Judicial Responses”, my former Western Carolina University colleagues Ed Lopez and H. Justin Pace and I discuss justifications for eminent domain.[1] Primarily, we discuss the holdout problem. The holdout problem […]
EconLog Price Theory: Fentanyl - Econlib
We’re bringing back price theory with our series on Price Theory problems with Professor Bryan Cutsinger. You can see all of Cutsinger’s problems and solutions by subscribing to his EconLog RSS feed. Share your proposed solutions in the Comments. Professor Cutsinger will be present in the comments for the next couple of weeks, and we’ll post his […]
Introducing We Have Never Been Woke - Econlib
Time again for another one of my multi-post deep dives into a book I found interesting. This time, the book is We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite by Musa al-Gharbi. As always, my next several posts will be my attempts to reflect al-Gharbi’s views rather than my own, and […]
Untenable Tenant Anger - Econlib
Today, I continue on the previously explored theme on how economics can create reactions others might find as odd. In my earlier take on this, I described how I am very often glad rather than resentful that a particular good or service requires payment – even (especially?) when its something I really need. For this […]
The Enemy of Your Enemy is Not Your Friend - Econlib
In this episode of EconTalk from January, Russ Roberts chatted with everyone’s favorite guest, Duke University’s Michael Munger about Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) and the hope—or hype—behind delegating government slim-downs to big tech. As we’ve watched the DOGE drama unfold in the months since, it seems a good time to revisit this […]
Does the public favor rent control? - Econlib
Consider the following tweet: When I moved to Massachusetts in 1982, major cities such as Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline had rent control. Massachusetts is also one of the most Democratic states in the country. Today, Massachusetts doesn’t have rent control. So how did that happen? In 1994, Massachusetts had a referendum on rent control, and voters […]
Price Controls on Oranges - Econlib
Earlier this week, I posed the following problem in price theory. The government imposes a binding price ceiling on oranges. But it does not impose any price ceiling on orange juice. After the price ceiling on oranges is imposed, what will happen to the price of orange juice? (Assume a competitive market for oranges.) Show […]
It Can't Be A Coincidence! - Econlib
Recently, co-bloggers Scott Sumner and Kevin Corcoran had a series of excellent posts on causation, coincidence, and identities (Scott’s post is here and Kevin’s are here, here, and here). I want to add my two cents to the conversation with some readings and thoughts for interested readers. A theme that runs through both their posts […]
Read Like a Champion (with Doug Lemov) - Econlib
Many students graduate high school today without having read a book cover to cover. Many students struggle to learn to read at all. How did this happen? Listen as educator and author Doug Lemov talks with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about the failed fads in reading education, the mistaken emphasis on vocabulary as a skill, and the […]
My Weekly Reading for July 27, 2025 - Econlib
Meet the Medicaid Double-Dippers by the Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2025. Excerpt: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported late last week that 1.2 million Americans last year were enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program in two or more states. The agency worked with software engineers […]
A Nonexistent Quote About Free Trade - Econlib
I fear we have to admit it: there is not a single truly free country among the 200 or so that occupy this planet. If there were one, we would have expected a representative of its state to declare publicly, about the current trade war, something like the following—let me put it in blockquote even […]
The REAL Land of Cockaigne - Econlib
Grocery stores are true marvels of markets. Roast chickens don’t fly into your mouth, but they are roasting on a rotating spit in the deli section. Typical grocery stores carry thousands of items that make the land of Cockaigne look meagre. The centuries old myth and poem about Cockaigne depicts a mythical place that far […]
Tariffs Foreshadow a VAT? - Econlib
A year ago, I had this to say: The progressive left will never be able to achieve their dream of a Euro-style welfare state by taxing the rich. If you read the smarter progressives, they all know this. They understand that the US would have to add a large tax on consumption in order to […]
Discrepancy Does Not Imply Discrimination - Econlib
In almost any discussion of political and social issues, someone will use the argument that a discrepancy between two groups is per se evidence of discrimination against one group. However, statistical analysis reveals that the latter is not necessarily true. For example, it is true that women make less than men, but women also tend […]
How to Walk the World (with Chris Arnade) - Econlib
Skip the Mona Lisa when you visit Paris. Don’t tour the Coliseum in Rome. Walk, don’t hurry. Chris Arnade speaks with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about a different way to travel. Listen as Arnade shares what he learned from Istanbul’s small community mosques and how Avignon’s Congolese-neighborhood cathedrals provided moving moments of spirituality. He also explains why Japan and Vietnam’s emphasis on community lends itself to more happiness than America’s […]
Minimum Wage Misery - Econlib
I know of a young man who is mentally handicapped. He aspires for a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant, or stocking shelves in a supermarket, or pushing a broom around pretty much anywhere. He is big and strong, and can easily do any of these types of work, but he is slow. He […]
My Weekly Reading for July 13, 2025 - Econlib
I’ve been setting up my cottage in Canada and relaxing, which is why I haven’t posted this week. I’ll pick up the pace this coming week. The Young Rothbard: an Uncomfortable Neoclassical Economist by Joseph T. Salerno, Mises.org, July 3. 2025. Excerpts: Rothbard took courses with all these eminent economists but was especially influenced by […]
The Economics of Rage Bait - Econlib
Clickbait describes a phenomenon where a headline is given a deliberately provocative title to try to get users to engage with some kind of online content. We may bemoan the phenomenon, but it persists because it’s effective. The most effective form of clickbait is known as rage bait. As the name suggests, rage bait is […]
The Law and Economics: Against Siloing - Econlib
From June 1 through June 13, I was in Park City, Utah participating in the Law Institute for Economics Professors run by the Law & Economics Center at Scalia Law School. It was a two-week crash course in American law and I will be sharing some insights over future posts (as an aside, if you […]
Just a Coincidence? - Econlib
The human brain seems wired to notice patterns. This presumably has some evolutionary advantages, but this attribute can lead us astray in a world that is overloaded with data. I’ll start with a personal anecdote, and then show the implications for data analysis. Back on June 18th, I was traveling through the west side of […]