Daily Economy
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An Economic Answer to the Question: Why Did Thor Get Fat?
Explaining Thor’s slovenly despair as the product of pizza, TV, and alcohol per se ignores root causes that might be a lot harder to change or dislodge.
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US vs. Denmark: Which Country Wins?
Measured by GDP per capita, Danish-American living standards are 55% higher than their counterparts in Denmark.
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Output Growth Holds Steady but Details Look Soft
Real gross domestic product rose at a 2.1 percent annualized rate in the fourth quarter. Details show that persistent economic growth remains dependent on consumers.
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How America Became Rich, According to a Historian in 1802
For the last quarter century, I have tried to explain the causes of economic growth to my fellow historians. A few have caught on but not the ones whose publications garner the most attention. New Historians of Capitalism/Slavery are the worst offenders, as I showed in The Poverty of Slavery: How Unfree Labor Pollutes the…
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It’s Legal for Politicians To Text You Spam
Here’s the great irony: the law purporting to ban spam texts actually ends up permissioning the political class to break the terms of the law for themselves. Otherwise, technological innovation alone would likely have fixed this problem already.
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The Economics of Price and Quantity Signals
The first time I thought about the relationship between quantity and price, I was a teenager working at the same job that taught me about transaction costs in labor markets. Evidently, there was much for me to learn at this rather dull junior sales job for a shipping company. Being paid according to a fairly…
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Who Was Claude-Frédéric Bastiat? Video with David Hart (Part 2)
Bastiat’s writings showed the very great depth of his economic thinking and made advances which heralded the Austrian school of economics which emerged later in the century. Bastiat to the end was an indefatigable foe of political privilege, unaccountable monarchical power, the newly emergent socialist movement, and above all, the vested interests who benefited from…
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Unaccountable Accounting in the Pentagon
Even somewhat less than eagle-eyed observers will, if only by virtue of the size of the number, take note: the 2020 budget for the Pentagon is roughly three-quarters of one trillion dollars ($738 billion), and yet it has reported $35 trillion in accounting adjustments in 2019, a near $5 trillion increase over the previous year. …
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The Economics of Pandemics and Quarantines
Soft-handed measures are cheaper and more effective in diminishing contagion than heavy-handed measures.
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California’s Contractor Law Violates Free Speech
It is becoming increasingly difficult to reject the hypothesis that California lawmakers are trying to solve their state’s notorious housing crisis by driving out everyone who isn’t a lover of earthquakes, fires, to-die-for weather, and arbitrary government. Their latest Constitutional faux pas is AB5, which, among many other things, limits California freelance journalists to 35…
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•
An Economic Answer to the Question: Why Did Thor Get Fat?
Explaining Thor’s slovenly despair as the product of pizza, TV, and alcohol per se ignores root causes that might be a lot harder to change or dislodge.
-
•
US vs. Denmark: Which Country Wins?
Measured by GDP per capita, Danish-American living standards are 55% higher than their counterparts in Denmark.
-
•
Output Growth Holds Steady but Details Look Soft
Real gross domestic product rose at a 2.1 percent annualized rate in the fourth quarter. Details show that persistent economic growth remains dependent on consumers.
-
•
How America Became Rich, According to a Historian in 1802
For the last quarter century, I have tried to explain the causes of economic growth to my fellow historians. A few have caught on but not the ones whose publications garner the most attention. New Historians of Capitalism/Slavery are the worst offenders, as I showed in The Poverty of Slavery: How Unfree Labor Pollutes the…
-
•
It’s Legal for Politicians To Text You Spam
Here’s the great irony: the law purporting to ban spam texts actually ends up permissioning the political class to break the terms of the law for themselves. Otherwise, technological innovation alone would likely have fixed this problem already.
-
•
The Economics of Price and Quantity Signals
The first time I thought about the relationship between quantity and price, I was a teenager working at the same job that taught me about transaction costs in labor markets. Evidently, there was much for me to learn at this rather dull junior sales job for a shipping company. Being paid according to a fairly…
-
•
Who Was Claude-Frédéric Bastiat? Video with David Hart (Part 2)
Bastiat’s writings showed the very great depth of his economic thinking and made advances which heralded the Austrian school of economics which emerged later in the century. Bastiat to the end was an indefatigable foe of political privilege, unaccountable monarchical power, the newly emergent socialist movement, and above all, the vested interests who benefited from…
-
•
Unaccountable Accounting in the Pentagon
Even somewhat less than eagle-eyed observers will, if only by virtue of the size of the number, take note: the 2020 budget for the Pentagon is roughly three-quarters of one trillion dollars ($738 billion), and yet it has reported $35 trillion in accounting adjustments in 2019, a near $5 trillion increase over the previous year. …
-
•
The Economics of Pandemics and Quarantines
Soft-handed measures are cheaper and more effective in diminishing contagion than heavy-handed measures.
-
•
California’s Contractor Law Violates Free Speech
It is becoming increasingly difficult to reject the hypothesis that California lawmakers are trying to solve their state’s notorious housing crisis by driving out everyone who isn’t a lover of earthquakes, fires, to-die-for weather, and arbitrary government. Their latest Constitutional faux pas is AB5, which, among many other things, limits California freelance journalists to 35…