Economic Education
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Minimum Wages Had a Eugenic Intent
“Let’s say that instead of a $15 an hour minimum, Congress pushed a $15 maximum wage/salary. The rich would simply stop working, while everyone else would likely lose professional aspiration. This is not complicated to understand. So too with a wage floor: it cuts the poor out of the market just as the eugenicists said…
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The Difference Between Copper and Cucumbers
“Most of the raw materials that we ever brought out of the Earth’s crust are still with us, capable of being used and then turned into something else when that better fits our needs and wants. Cucumbers and renewable crops don’t have that quality. If anything, Circular Economy proponents should be horrified by cucumbers, not…
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Gordon Tullock: A Birthday Appreciation
“Long after many influential economists have been relegated to footnotes or forgotten, I believe people will still be reading and citing Tullock’s work, and not as historical curiosities, either. They will be reading and citing the work of a scholar who made timeless contributions to how we understand the world.” ~ Art Carden
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A Currency that Rises in Value Will Change Everything
“Maybe widespread ownership and use of Bitcoin and other cryptos can make a cultural and economic contribution to converting us from profligate to thrifty in the way our great-great grandparents could celebrate. After all, it was they, and the gold standard under which they lived, that set us on the course to building a modern…
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A Vaccine Auction
“As long as the problems of efficiency and distributive justice are separable, one can leave vaccine allocation to a (thoughtfully designed) market while leaving it to elected officials to debate and pursue, at their own pace, the kind of distributive justice that they think their constituents deserve.” ~ Romans Pancs
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Julian Simon: Important Enough to Name Your Kids After
“Simon was a model mind and an outstanding intellectual citizen. He thought through the theory and formulated his hypotheses very carefully. He tested his hypotheses against the data. Importantly, he took real and consequential action based on his beliefs–at great risk to his own reputation, but to the everlasting benefit of the rest of us.”…
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Is the Public Interest Really In the Public’s Interest?
“The fact that something is popular doesn’t mean it is right or even beneficial. A better way forward is to simply lay out arguments in full, detailing why and how such proposals would result in the best outcomes for the most people while being prepared to own the consequences. This discussion should be accepting of…
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Price-gouged and Happy About It
“When the anti–price gouging law is in effect, being able to buy a necessity here is a matter of timing: being on store premises at or shortly after a shipment arrives. Then you can buy it, and not even at the market price, but at the pre-emergency price enforced by the government. Everyone else is…
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“Sustainability” Misses the Point
“By standard definitions, what we are doing is ‘unsustainable,’ but most human activities are. Over some time period every activity is unsustainable, but that’s not an indictment, practically or morally, of doing them. When the environment is harming humans (the default position of life), we should offer those humans the best available protection against that…
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A Nuanced Approach to China Part 2
“Chinese economic prosperity does directly contribute to its authoritarian goals, but trade wars and isolation have not done anything to remedy the situation. Rather a strategy of economic integration will likely lead to not only mutually beneficial outcomes, but also greater leverage in the future if the need to take action arises.” ~ Ethan Yang
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•
Minimum Wages Had a Eugenic Intent
“Let’s say that instead of a $15 an hour minimum, Congress pushed a $15 maximum wage/salary. The rich would simply stop working, while everyone else would likely lose professional aspiration. This is not complicated to understand. So too with a wage floor: it cuts the poor out of the market just as the eugenicists said…
-
•
The Difference Between Copper and Cucumbers
“Most of the raw materials that we ever brought out of the Earth’s crust are still with us, capable of being used and then turned into something else when that better fits our needs and wants. Cucumbers and renewable crops don’t have that quality. If anything, Circular Economy proponents should be horrified by cucumbers, not…
-
•
Gordon Tullock: A Birthday Appreciation
“Long after many influential economists have been relegated to footnotes or forgotten, I believe people will still be reading and citing Tullock’s work, and not as historical curiosities, either. They will be reading and citing the work of a scholar who made timeless contributions to how we understand the world.” ~ Art Carden
-
•
A Currency that Rises in Value Will Change Everything
“Maybe widespread ownership and use of Bitcoin and other cryptos can make a cultural and economic contribution to converting us from profligate to thrifty in the way our great-great grandparents could celebrate. After all, it was they, and the gold standard under which they lived, that set us on the course to building a modern…
-
•
A Vaccine Auction
“As long as the problems of efficiency and distributive justice are separable, one can leave vaccine allocation to a (thoughtfully designed) market while leaving it to elected officials to debate and pursue, at their own pace, the kind of distributive justice that they think their constituents deserve.” ~ Romans Pancs
-
•
Julian Simon: Important Enough to Name Your Kids After
“Simon was a model mind and an outstanding intellectual citizen. He thought through the theory and formulated his hypotheses very carefully. He tested his hypotheses against the data. Importantly, he took real and consequential action based on his beliefs–at great risk to his own reputation, but to the everlasting benefit of the rest of us.”…
-
•
Is the Public Interest Really In the Public’s Interest?
“The fact that something is popular doesn’t mean it is right or even beneficial. A better way forward is to simply lay out arguments in full, detailing why and how such proposals would result in the best outcomes for the most people while being prepared to own the consequences. This discussion should be accepting of…
-
•
Price-gouged and Happy About It
“When the anti–price gouging law is in effect, being able to buy a necessity here is a matter of timing: being on store premises at or shortly after a shipment arrives. Then you can buy it, and not even at the market price, but at the pre-emergency price enforced by the government. Everyone else is…
-
•
“Sustainability” Misses the Point
“By standard definitions, what we are doing is ‘unsustainable,’ but most human activities are. Over some time period every activity is unsustainable, but that’s not an indictment, practically or morally, of doing them. When the environment is harming humans (the default position of life), we should offer those humans the best available protection against that…
-
•
A Nuanced Approach to China Part 2
“Chinese economic prosperity does directly contribute to its authoritarian goals, but trade wars and isolation have not done anything to remedy the situation. Rather a strategy of economic integration will likely lead to not only mutually beneficial outcomes, but also greater leverage in the future if the need to take action arises.” ~ Ethan Yang