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Every public policy comes with its own set of externalities and unintended consequences. Moreover, because politics exists at the nexus between competing interests, outcomes can often approach zero-sum, whether or not this was the initial aim of policymakers. Simply put, someone gains while someone loses; there is always a cost. In my previous post, we .. MORE
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Economic Growth
I happened to wake up in the middle of the night last week and turned on Turner Movie Classics (TCM). Playing at the time was the 1954 movie Brigadoon. I’d heard about it but never seen it. It’s about 2 guys on a hunting trip to Scotland who discover a place in mid-18th century Scotland .. MORE
Business Economics
Here’s a hot shopping tip that I suspect most readers won’t be able to take advantage of – at the moment, Apple is discounting the iPhone in China. But I don’t bring that up because I’m actually hoping to influence anyone’s shopping behavior. I find it noteworthy for other reasons. It may seem odd that .. MORE
Economics of Crime
Consequences of the War on Drugs™ Abroad In 1996, Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control Chuck Grassley testified that a recent poll revealed that eighty percent of Americans viewed as their primary foreign policy concern the stopping of illegal drugs being trafficked into the United States. The Senator was responding to his own concerns that .. MORE
International Trade
It has been discouraging to see that the lessons learned in the first half of the 20th century have now been forgotten, as nationalism is on the rise in many regions. And now we are seeing a repeat of the McCarthyism of the early 1950s. Here’s Foreign Policy: Not so long ago, consultancies and other .. MORE
Foreign Policy
From the River to the Sea–One State by Warren Coats, Warren’s Space, May 22, 2024. Excerpt: The recent attack and counterattack were continuations of 70 years of unresolved relations between the areas [sic] Palestinian and Jewish residents. Netanyahu remains adamantly against revising the Two State Solution (Oslo Accord) future and Saudi Arabia is equally insistent on .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
I once posted that I found John Rawls’ argument that it’s unjust to benefit from your natural abilities to be inferior to ideas found in J. R. R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings: More than anything, this kind of attitude reminds me of what Boromir says to Frodo when attempting to take the Ring .. MORE
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Bloggers David Henderson, Alberto Mingardi, Scott Sumner, Pierre Lemieux, Kevin Corcoran, and guests write on topical economics of interest to them, illuminating subjects from politics and finance, to recent films and cultural observations, to history and literature.
Browse our archive of posts by author last nameBooks: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Charging extra for specific preferences, such as a seat selection on a flight, enables lower basic prices, increasing access to no-frills options for lower-income customers, while allowing businesses to customize their services to individual customers’ preferences. Airlines unbundle in-flight food and checked bags, for example, leading to more profit opportunities and lower base fares. .. MORE
Austrian Economics
As with any tale, it is useful to begin at the beginning. And in my instance, all my beginnings related to Austrian economics are found at Grove City College. How I ended up at Grove City is an extremely unlikely journey with zigs and zags, the probability of which defies all calculation. I was not .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
I live in Alabama, where college football is the major religion. The two major denominations are the University of Alabama Crimson Tide and the Auburn University Tigers. They have fought a storied and ludicrously overwrought rivalry since 1893, except for the four-decade gap between 1907 and 1948 when they didn’t play one another because the .. MORE
A Liberty Classics Book Review of Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason: Text and Documents, by F.A. Hayek (edited by Bruce Caldwell). 1 According to F.A. Hayek, what are the theoretical and historical reasons for the tragedies of socialism that emerged in the 20th century? Hayek attempted to answer this question in what .. MORE
If federal regulators are thought to have better judgment about risk than the bankers themselves (due to the bankers’ presumed moral-hazard problems), then there really is no reason to allow private banking to continue. — Jeffrey Friedman and Wladimir Kraus1 We tend to think of regulated markets as if they were a far cry from .. MORE
… despite spending billions of dollars supporting its infrastructure, and publishing untold thousands of white papers, the establishment Right has registered no clear gains and many clear losses. Much of the nation was conquered on its watch. … In terms of political and moral power, the Left currently rules every consequential sector of society, from .. MORE
A Book Review of Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue: Tax Follies and Wisdom through the Ages, by Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod.1 Introduction What do you think would happen if suddenly beards and bachelorhood were taxed? Ridiculous, you say? Not so! In the later 17th century, Tsar Peter the Great instituted a beard tax to change .. MORE
I am sure that the number of occupied housing units in the overall Detroit Metro area is at an all-time high (as is the population itself, I believe). The emptiness of the core city is..
MarkW, May 19