Here’s my latest column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
[...]
Here’s a letter that I just sent to the editor of USA Today:
You excoriate what you accurately call the “let’s-make-a-deal legislating” that is behind the health-care bill now wending its way through Congress (”Last-minute deals obscure health reform’s larger good,” Dec. 23). And you complain about the shocking “shortsightedness” [...]
Dom Armentano contributes this great letter to today’s Wall Street Journal:
Your editorial is correct to condemn the Federal Trade Commission’s attack on Intel (”The 100 Years Chip War,” Dec. 18), but it is dead wrong to conclude that the government’s antitrust intervention is “unprecedented” or that antitrust laws [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent earlier today to The Economist:
SIR:
You eloquently celebrate the life of the late economist Paul Samuelson (”Economic Focus,” Dec. 19). But it bears pointing out that, for all of his undoubted brilliance, Mr Samuelson did not examine government with the same rigorous skepticism that [...]
Following up, in a way, on my previous post, I link to this remarkable article by the late, great Leonard Read. Making a most profound point, it was published 51 years ago this month. I shall make a habit, here at the Cafe, of celebrating it every December.
[...]My old and very dear friend Kerry “Over the Hump” Dugas prompts me to post this letter that I sent to the New York Times on 12 December 2004:
John Horgan asks “How do you denounce dogmatism in others without succumbing to it yourself?” (“Keeping the Faith, in My Doubt,” [...]
The graph here doesn’t prove that the F.T.C.’s allegation is baseless, but it does suggest that competition continues to serve computer consumers very well indeed — so well [...]
Mr. Jim Farley, Station Manager
WTOP Radio
Washington, DC
Dear Mr. Farley:
Each time your station runs a comment by Colbert King, Cal Thomas, and other pundits, your anchors announce “WTOP brings you commentary and analysis from both sides.”
The “conservative/liberal” division – although thought of in America today as the two [...]
My GMU colleague (and Division of Labour’s) Larry White filmed this two-plus-minute-long video earlier today in Bangalore, India. (HT Andy Roth)
UPDATE: My sincere apologies: My colleague Larry White just e-mailed me to inform me that he is not the person who filmed this video. I believe him (!). [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent last week to the Wall Street Journal:
Edward Short offers one of his favorite quotations from Thomas Babington Macaulay (Letters, Dec. 10). I here offer one of my own; it is the final paragraph of Macaulay’s brilliant and timeless 1830 essay “Southey’s Colloquies [...]
(Or as my colleague Dan Klein suggests I title this post: “Ignorance of the Law: An Excuse in Making It But Not in Complying with It?”)
…….
Dear Mr. Schieffer:
Interviewed on December 11th by Washington’s WTOP radio, you observed that “none of the senators really knows what’s in the health-care bill [...]
A Dr. Joel Harrison takes aim at Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey’s reasons for rejecting Obamacare. (HT Kristi Kendall) Dr. Harrison’s aim is poor. Here I address one of his off-target claims, to wit:
[Mackey proposes] Repealing mandates on what insurance must cover & state laws which prevent insurance companies [...]
My friend Greg Rehmke just alerted me to this mid-November report appearing in the New York Times on ‘green energy.’ Note especially this passage:
The low sign-up rate [for 'green energy' programs] raises a question: If large majorities of Americans favor increased government support for clean energy, as polls suggest, [...]
Dear Mr. Schieffer:
Interviewed on Friday by WTOP radio, you observed that “none of the senators really knows what’s in the health-care bill they’re debating.” You then excused this ignorance by noting that “the problem they’re tackling is very complicated.”
While you’re correct that trying to engineer an industry that’s one-sixth the [...]
I would love to be able to spin some morality tale from this story of the success (so far!) during the 2009 season of the New Orleans Saints. I would love to be able to write a poem, or a pedestrian blog-post, or a newspaper column, about how the [...]
The 2010 meetings of the Association of Private Enterprise Education (APEE) will be held April 11-13 in Las Vegas. And the following announcement was sent to me by e-mail:
APEE has received a grant to help young faculty and graduate students attend our annual meeting April 11-13, 2010 in Las [...]
This great letter in today’s Wall Street Journal makes an important point:
Reducing the Fed’s role to just guaranteeing the convertibility of dollars into some preset collateral is a step in the right direction as it eliminates the Fed’s discretion, effectively ending its disastrous role as the monetary central planner. [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent this morning to the St. Petersburg Times:
Former Miami Herald employee Robert Steinback, pleading for greater government control of health-care markets, writes: “I don’t understand people who fear government bureaucrats – who have no profit motive and ultimately must answer to the people – yet [...]
Here’s my most-recent column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. In it, I expand on the idea that people want, not opportunities to toil, but opportunities to earn income for themselves — and that, in a prosperous economy, nearly all such opportunities entail producing value for others.
I close my column this [...]
Norris (a self-described “regular patron of Cafe Hayek”) asked me to repost an entry that I did back in October of 2004 on magic. Here it is:
Magic
by DON BOUDREAUX on OCTOBER 12, 2004
in MYTHS AND FALLACIES
My son, Thomas, loves Halloween so much that he launches his [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:
Thomas Friedman writes: “If we prepare for climate change by building a clean-power economy, but climate change turns out to be a hoax, what would be the result? … [G]radually we would be driving battery-powered electric cars and powering [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to Judy Woodruff at PBS:
Ms. Judy Woodruff
PBS Newshour
Dear Ms. Woodruff:
I enjoyed your interview yesterday with Bruce Bartlett and Paul Krugman. But I wonder if you’re as baffled by Prof. Krugman as I am.
On one hand, Krugman’s voice is America’s most prestigious, [...]
This evening while shopping at Target I noticed that, in a single trip out to the parking lot, one (teenage) employee manages to round up and return to the entry-way of the store a quantity of shopping carts that, when I was working such jobs 30-plus years ago, required the [...]
Is there no aspect of our lives that Congress will not nose in to? (HT Reuvain Borchardt)
Words fail me when trying to describe the disgust I feel for the obnoxious, officious, opportunistic, unprincipled, lying (Do they really mean their oaths to uphold the U.S. Constitution?), arrogant, imperious, and duplicitous [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent today to the Wall Street Journal:
Andrew Roberts’s review of Robert Sullivan’s biography of Thomas Babington Macaulay splendidly exposes the blinding biases that Sullivan brings to Lord Macaulay and his times (”An Eminent Victorian on Trial,” Dec. 7). Persons interested in Macaulay should avoid [...]
This video shows the carbon-concerned saviors arriving at the Copenhagen meetings. (HT Frayda Levy)
[...]Here’s an e-mail that John Stossel sent to lots of folks. It’s self-explanatory — and contains great news!
It’s finally here – my new Fox Business show! Fox fittingly has titled it, Stossel. It premieres Thursday at 8 p.m. It will repeat Fridays at 10 p.m., where I’ll be up against [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent earlier today to the Boston Globe:
Barry Brodsky asserts that military conscription is “just and honorable” (Letters, Dec. 6).
Really? Forcing young men and women to fight against their will is “just”? Confiscating several years of their lives by coercing them to serve the state [...]
My and Russ’s friend Pietro Poggi-Corradini, a mathematics professor at Kansas State University, recently informed us by e-mail of his concern for green growing things:
From now on if I’ll skip the salad during a meal I will loudly proclaim that I’m happy to do so because that “will save some [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent today to the Washington Post:
Dana Milbank rightly ridicules “Progressive” Americans who mistook Barack Obama for being a messiah (”Obama the mortal,” Dec. 6). But don’t be too hard on these gullible folk. For years, their intellectual superstars (including some of your own columnists) [...]
Great news! My and Russ’s GMU colleague, Charles Rowley, has started blogging.
I encourage you regularly to read Charles’s insights here.
[...]Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:
RE Thursday’s White House “Jobs Summit” (”Obama Turns to Job Creation, but Warns of Limited Funds,” Dec. 4): the language is misleading.
Jobs themselves do not need to be created, for they are among the most abundant opportunities in [...]
On his blog, John Stossel alerted me to Sen. Chuck Schumer’s most recent spasm of stupid protectionist sentiments. In response to New York’s senior senator, I sent this letter to the New York Daily News:
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) is upset that Adidas will shift its manufacturing of National [...]
Here’s a wonderful essay from a year ago by 2006 Nobel Laureate economist Edmund Phelps. (HT Michael Strong) A sampling:
The other difficulty with that fashionable hypothesis [that market-generated economic growth is overrated] is that most of the alleged costs are illusory or trumped up. The idea that a well-functioning [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent earlier this afternoon to a reporter for CBS News:
Mr. Bob Foss, CBS Radio News
New York, NY
Dear Mr. Foss:
On today’s 1:00pm national-news radio broadcast you reported that the Senate voted to require all insurance companies “to cover mammograms and pap smears at no cost.”
The [...]
I’m a bit confused by Ed Glaeser’s column in today’s Boston Globe. It’s unclear if he blames markets per se for much of the recent financial meltdown, or, instead, blames insufficient regulation in light of the reality that Uncle Sam is always too likely to bail out too many [...]
Virgil Storr and I were chatting just outside of my office a moment ago. I observed that (former U.S. Treasury Secretary) “Hank Paulson looks like a bad guy in a Bond flick.”
Virgil immediately replied: “He is a bad guy in a bond flick.” !!!
[...]Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the Boston Globe:
You propose a tax credit for firms that hire new employees (”To boost jobs, give tax breaks to businesses that hire,” Dec. 1). Bad idea. A far better idea is to cut taxes on corporate profits.
You correctly recognize that [...]
My friend Steve Pejovich alerted me to this post over at Mark Perry’s Carpe Diem. The graph says much, but here’s Mark’s bottom-line take on these data:
Bottom Line: World GDP (real) doubled between 1969 and 1990, and has increased by another 60% since then, so that world output in [...]
The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s outstanding columnist and blogger Bart Hinkle wrote today on Virginia’s quest to regulate yoga instructors — and on the valiant effort of the Institute for Justice to stop such officious interference.
Note from this passage in Hinkle’s column the unbridled arrogance of the pro-regulation crowd:
In fact, [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:
Pleading for government to address today’s unemployment problem more vigorously, Paul Krugman writes that “The long-term unemployed can lose their skills, and even when the economy recovers they tend to have difficulty finding a job, because they’re regarded as [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent earlier today to the Washington Post:
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke asserts – as if it’s an incontrovertible fact – that “The Fed played a major part in arresting the [current] crisis” (”The right reform for the Fed,” Nov. 29).
First, it isn’t clear that our [...]
29 November 2009
Mr. Ben Bernanke, Chairman
Federal Reserve Board
Washington, DC
Dear Mr Bernanke:
I had to down an extra mug of coffee this morning to be certain that I read your op-ed in today’s Washington Post correctly. Sure enough, you claim to be worried about a recent House-committee vote to, [...]
By the way, interpreting the data in ways that suggest that the poor are getting richer and that consumption “inequality” is declining is not obviously ideological — as [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to Fred Hochberg, President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States — an agency charged with helping American firms export more:
Dear Mr. Hochberg:
My e-mail today brought a proud announcement from CG/LA Infrastructure LLC that you’ll speak at one of that company’s [...]
Steve Horwitz is on a roll! In this blog post, he presents Census Bureau data showing that America’s poor people continue to get richer — and are positively wealthy compared to the typical American of the early 1970s.
[...]Here’s a letter that I just sent to the New York Times:
Paul Krugman supports a “Tobin tax” as a means of reducing speculation (”Taxing the Speculators,” Nov. 27).
Bad idea. Speculators buy assets only when they predict that these assets’ prices will rise; speculators sell assets only when they predict [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent earlier today to the Wall Street Journal:
A headline in today’s edition reads “Dollar Falls Against Yen; Japan Hints at Action.” A more revealing headline would read “U.S. Goods Become Less Costly for Japanese People; Japanese Government Hints at Preventing Its Citizens from Enjoying [...]
The Atlas Foundation’s Tom Palmer works tirelessly to promote (true) liberalism and free markets around the world, especially in places where these institutions are most scarce.
You can help. I will.
[...]Until Cafe patron Annie sent me this link, I was unaware of this blog. But I very much like this blog post (which features several excellent quotations from Randy Barnett). (Thanks Annie!)
[...]Suffolk University’s Ben Powell — a GMU economics PhD — reminds us why the pilgrims had reason to be thankful: they got rid of a turkey of an economic arrangement. Here’s a selection from Ben’s short essay:
In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. [...]
I’m delighted that Hayek’s 1973 Wincott Lecture is now available on-line. Here it is. (HT Richard Wellings of the Institute of Economic Affairs.)
Volume 1 of Hayek’s Law, Legislation, and Liberty is the single most important book that I’ve ever read. This lecture is a good introduction to [...]
Here’s my latest column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. (The 90-percent figure that I cite early on really should read 85-percent.)
[...]George Selgin’s 1997 monograph (published by the IEA of London) Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy is now available on-line. What great news!
With confusion about money, banking, and monetary policy running rampant these days, George’s clear and compelling argument for “the [...]
Reading this editorial in today’s Baltimore Sun makes me realize that the world is full of people who believe in square circles, mighty hurricanes whose strongest winds are but gentle breezes, and (of course) cats that bark. I sent this letter in response:
You are right to decry the increasing [...]
I here plead guilty to interpreting Paul Krugman unfairly. I’ve long read a passage in this 2002 New York Times Magazine essay by Krugman as being evidence of his endorsement of the common but false belief in zero-sum economics — the belief that Joe can get richer only by [...]
In yesterday’s Washington Post, the great George Will has an excellent column — with this outstanding concluding line:
Today, there is a name for the political doctrine that rejoices in scarcity of everything except government. The name is environmentalism.
[...]Here’s a letter that I sent few days ago to the New York Times:
Paul Krugman asserts that Beijing increases global unemployment by “siphoning much-needed demand away from the rest of the world into the pockets of artificially competitive Chinese exporters” (”World Out of Balance,” Nov. 16). This nefarious outcome [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the Washington Post:
Your front-page story on talented, credentialed, and underemployed Melissa Meyer should dispel the notion that today’s economic troubles are comparable to those of the Great Depression (”In recession, one road led back home,” Nov. 22).
Photos from the 1930s show [...]
On the Oppenheimer Society listserve, someone asked for recommendations of good books and articles on globalization. David Boaz offered this superb list:
•Free Trade Under Fire (2nd ed.) by Douglas Irwin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005)
An empirical verification of the positive benefits of free trade.
•Why Globalization Works by Martin [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent today to the New York Times:
Paul Krugman insists that the nearly ten trillion dollars of projected U.S. government budget deficits over the next decade is a “phantom menace” (”The Phantom Menace,” Nov. 23). The real problem, according to Mr. Krugman, is that government’s [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:
Bob Herbert insists that manufacturing in the U.S. is a mere shadow of its past proud self – and that this alleged decline of America’s “industrial base” is the result of too many Americans concentrating on finance (”An [...]
Conservative Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby champions the cause of “illegal” immigrants. I applaud him.
[...]Here’s a letter that I sent to the Wall Street Journal:
Peter Navarro asserts that “China mops up vast sums of export dollars through sterilization efforts that are tantamount to forced saving. In the process, Chinese consumers lose significant purchasing power because of the undervalued yuan – and Americans lose millions [...]
In the current New Yorker, James Surowiecki is properly critical of the economic distortions introduced by taxing debt-financed income much more lightly than taxing equity-financed income.
But his policy conclusion is a non sequitur:
Given the weak state of the economy and of housing prices, a wholesale rewriting of the [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent this morning to the Washington Post:
Harold Meyerson is confused about U.S. trade with China (”A marriage made in China,” Nov. 18).
As incontrovertible evidence that American exporters and producers are harmed by U.S.-China trade, he points to the fact that, since the 1998 agreement [...]
I’m attending now the 27th annual Cato Institute Monetary Conference.
Just before the conference kicked off this morning at 9am (EST), The Economist’s Zanny Minton Beddoes suggested that I do some live blogging while here. I hadn’t thought to do that. (I’m here to moderate one of the afternoon panels.)
But, [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the Washington Post:
Harold Meyerson’s discussion of U.S. trade with China is a buffet of errors (”A marriage made in China,” Nov. 18).
For example, portraying trade with China as gutting both America’s export potential and America’s manufacturing base, Meyerson fails to mention [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the Wall Street Journal:
John Micetich argues that “if we add up the bailouts to all financial firms, we’re well over $1 trillion, at least 10 times more than the Fred/Fan bailout. Therefore, let’s put most of the blame where it belongs: Wall [...]
Canadian Rondi Adamson offers her sober thoughts, in this short essay, on Canada’s health-care system. (HT Gerry Nicholls) Here’s a short snippet:
We [Canadians] would do well to not preach, in spite of Barack Obama’s assertion — during his appearance a few weeks ago on the Late Show with David [...]
In this article, I celebrate — on the occasion of his 90th birthday — the central lessons taught by Jim Buchanan (who, I have just learned, will again teach a seminar at GMU this coming Spring semester!).
A key ‘graf from my article:
Buchanan insists that we should always look [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the Florida Times-Union / Jacksonville.com:
The only thing worse than the satire in Joseph Steinman’s criticism of capitalism is Mr. Steinman’s command of the facts (”Private enterprise: Far from a perfect system,” Nov. 16).
For example, it’s untrue that health-care in the U.S. [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:
Columnist Paul Krugman writes that policies to promote “job sharing” are “worthy of consideration” (”Free to Lose,” Nov. 13).
Let’s start at the New York Times. I know several economists currently without jobs (and certainly without regular newspaper columns). [...]
“Saves lives, saves souls” — as wonderfully described by reader Charlie Quidnunc, who deserves a hat tip for drawing my and Russ’s attention to this further addition to the Prosperity Pool.
[...]Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times Book Review:
Paul Barrett’s review of two books on today’s financial crisis is a verbal bubble inflated by its author’s irrational exuberance for naïve conventional wisdom and his greedy reliance upon morality-play explanations (”Rational Irrationality,” Nov. 15).
The review [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:
Paul Krugman is impressed that in Germany “unemployment is only slightly higher than it was before the crisis” (”Free to Lose,” Nov. 13). Indeed, Krugman is so bedazzled by the results of Germany’s extensive labor-market interventions that he [...]
Commenting on this post, Daniel Kuehn suggests that when Paul Krugman advocates European-style labor-market restrictions and subsidies, he (Krugman) does so not as a means of increasing employment today – in the midst of a recession – but, rather, as a means of keeping employment from falling as [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:
To combat unemployment, Paul Krugman supports “labor rules that discourage firing” (”Free to Lose,” Nov. 13). If a student in my Principles of Economics course ever wrote such a thing on an exam, he or she would earn [...]
Here’s something to chew on for those who trust politicians with power. (HT Fletcher Mangum)
[...]
