Competition and Inequality
In my last post, Labour and the American Middle Class, I expressed my scepticism of the ability of unions to improve the incomes of the disadvantaged. However, this still leaves the question of how...
Category: Economics
Immigration, Inequality and Pie
Tim Lee has an excellent response up to this post by NRO’s Daniel Foster, who writes: Punishing a minor by removing him from the culture he’s adopted as his own, for the crimes of...
Why We Disagree About Taxes, Entitlements, and Economic Theory in General
In a previous post drawing the distinction between procedural and substantive justice, I noted my objection to the idea that procedural fairness ought to be subverted in order to guarantee predetermined outcomes. However—and although...
On Free Markets
So look, I believe that free markets are absolutely the way to go. Don’t go with the central planners – who wants wage controls dictated from the top down? Things didn’t work out so...
Why don’t we treat free trade like global warming?
Belief in anthropogenic global warming is a sort of political signifier for American liberals – if you don’t think human activity is changing the Earth’s climate, they’re probably not going to take you very...
Anti-Intellectualism and Magical Thinking
A couple follow-up thoughts on DougJ’s response to my Little Republics post. First of all, I think the charge of anti-intellectualism is a little off the mark. I have absolutely nothing against intellectuals or...
Progressives vs. Libertarians
I really think the two sides in this argument – the libertarians on the one hand and progressives on the other – simply have a very hard time understanding truly where the other is...
Quantitative Easing for Dummies
Speaking as someone who knows nothing about economics, I found this primer on the Fed’s plan to buy $600 billion in government debt pretty helpful.
Carson’s Rejoinder to Kuznicki
by Kevin Carson I read, with appreciation, Jason Kuznicki’s thoughtful review of my book Studies in Mutual Political Economy. He begins my noting that the book is, as the title suggests, a series of studies rather...
Neoliberalism & Culture
Will is absolutely correct to note that the success of the Anglophone and Northern European governance models (and their Asian counterparts who have emulated and innovated with these models successfully) rest a great deal...
Best anti-penny rant of all time?
This is quite brilliant (via): Besides, for the people who do inexplicably love pennies, think how much more their penny collections will be worth in a world that no longer mints them?
Immigration and the economy
This data from the Pew Research Center illustrates just how connected the influx of illegal immigration into the United States is tied to the soundness of the American and global economy: The annual inflow...
The Economics of Enlightenment
I have a short piece [here is the pdf download link] in the current issue of Econ Journal Watch, commenting on the recent ‘economic enlightenment’ survey Daniel Klein and Zeljka Buturovic published there a...
We’re already at war
James Poulos thinks I’m wrong to advocate against Arthur Brooks’ culture war: Alas, the cultural conflict is already blazing. Some people think a federal tax on tanning is a legitimate tool of economic policy....
Economics 101
[updated] Nate Silver puts several bullet-holes through this Wall Street Journal op-ed by Daniel Klein, which is a good thing since both Klein’s piece and the poll he conducted and then based the piece...
A farewell to supply-side economics
Writing in National Review, Kevin Williamson lays waste the ‘magical thinking’ of supply-siders and the notion that somehow tax cuts will completely pay for themselves. There’s a great deal of really excellent stuff in...
The economics of magic
I am perhaps four fifths of the way through the fourth of the Malazan books – House of Chains – and there is a moment in this book in which a character muses about...
Auserity Measures
Via National Review, here’s an interesting article on Lithuania’s belt-tightening response to the financial crisis: Faced with rising deficits that threatened to bankrupt the country, Lithuania cut public spending by 30 percent — including slashing...
The age of ideological uncertainty, continued
Anti-stimulus sentiment ran high in the comments section of my (qualified) defense of the Obama Administration’s economic policy. I encourage the skeptics to check out this article from Richard Posner, which mounts a limited...
Fools and scoundrels
“If anyone tries to tell you that uncertainty about climate change is a reason for inaction, he’s either a fool or a scoundrel. Probably a bit of both.” ~ Mark Kleiman Kleiman makes a...
