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I mentioned in a previous post that The Economist appears to lose all rationality when one specific topic is broached. The writer of the magazine’s April 20 newsletter “The World in Brief” gave another illustration in the section “The Day Ahead”: he could not mention the 25th anniversary of the horrible Columbine school massacre without doing .. MORE
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Economics of Crime
This is the second in my series of posts on the social costs of drug prohibition. You can read the first post here. In 1878, Congress passed Title 18 U.S.C. §1385, commonly known as the Posse Comitatus Act, to address the question of using the military for the purposes of civilian law enforcement. Previous uses .. MORE
Education
A student group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest issued a statement quoted by the Wall Street Journal (“New York Mayor Says Conflict at Columbia Must End as Police Amass Nearby,” April 30, 2024): “Do not incite another Kent or Jackson State by bringing soldiers and police officers with weapons to our campus,” the group said, .. MORE
Economic History
Last month, I posted on some of the intellectual contributions of economic and business historian Robert Hessen, who died on April 15. At the time, I didn’t have access to his contribution to Ayn Rand’s book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. But I got a copy from the library and found his essay. It’s titled, “The .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Warning: There will be spoilers in this post for the plot of Dune, including plot points from the second book that will serve as the basis for the as-yet unmade third movie. The recently released Dune: Part 2 has been a big box-office success, as was the first movie. These two movies were based on .. MORE
Political Economy
Perhaps as a sequel of mankind’s long tribal history, people apparently need scapegoats to shed the weight of sins and responsibilities from their shoulders. In democratic countries, “unelected officials” figure among the favorite scapegoats. It is an easy path to follow under the sun of simple beliefs, and I confess I once found it tempting. .. MORE
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
In mid-October 2023, I wrote a draft of a blog post that I didn’t end up posting. I’m running it below, word for word as I wrote it in October. In October, I ran it by a friend who is very pro-immigration and, even though he largely agreed with it, he thought my proposal wouldn’t .. MORE
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Browse our archive of posts by author last nameBooks: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Years ago, I read Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty by Muhammad Yunus. In the book, Yunus describes the origins and purpose of the Grameen Bank. This bank specializes in offering small loans to people in poverty to help them begin to attain self-sufficiency. This isn’t a charitable organization – .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Public Goods differ from private goods in that they are non-rivalrous in consumption and nonexcludable. If I watch a fireworks show, it doesn’t reduce the amount of “fireworks show” my neighbor can enjoy. If I’m going to put on a fireworks show, I can’t prevent non-payers from watching my bombs bursting in air. Since public .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Political and moral philosophy are related to economics, and even less stealthily to the older political economy. The economist cannot recommend a government policy without making or accepting a value judgment consistent with who is going to be helped and who will be harmed. At least, he must believe that the policy falls within the .. MORE
Ludwig von Mises The works of Ludwig von Mises and James M. Buchanan reflect the best of the classical liberal intellectual tradition. Given the centenary of the publication of Mises’ Socialism,1 and since 2023 marked the tenth anniversary of the passing of Buchanan, it seems an excellent time to remember their contributions. Both defend methodological .. MORE
Questions are not scarce in economics, and the title of this book poses a whopper: “Are Economists Basically Immoral?”1 Spoiler alert, the answer is “no”. However, it is easy to see how economists get a bad rap when the public thinks economics is all about greed and maximizing profit. A book that uses this question .. MORE
Book Review of Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life, by Emily A. Austin.1 The name Epicurus is often associated with indulgent hedonism. This stereotypical mischaracterization, which has found its way into pop culture and even into supermarket names, suggests a life of excess is the route to happiness. However, a new book by .. MORE
The story of how I became an economist is its own odyssey: I started college as an English major, intending to hone my creative writing skills, and hopefully to drop out after I wrote the first book of an extremely long, best-selling fantasy epic. The winds of fate blew in other directions and I found .. MORE
I do not see any contradiction in thinking that all the value of a firm is created by the workers, that all "surplus" should go to workers, profits of owners ought to be zero [I..
Thomas L Hutcheson, May 1