EconLog Archive
Economics of Crime
Blurring Posse Comitatus: The Increased Militarization of Police
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
Armed Men on Campus!
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
Robert Hessen on the Industrial Revolution
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
Frank Herbert’s Dune – A Cautionary Tale
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
“Unelected Officials” Are Convenient Scapegoats
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
Let Them In and Let Them Work
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
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
America, but with fewer immigrants
America is an outlier. Its GDP per capita is far higher than any other country with at least 10 million people. The US GDP per capita (PPP adjusted) is $85,373, while the next nine range from Taiwan at $77,858 to the UK at $58,880. (All of these are IMF estimates for 2024.) If you prefer .. MORE
Economics of Crime
At What Cost: The Social Costs of Drug Prohibition
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
Free Markets
Tariffs are Sanctions Against Consumers
Who do tariffs punish? Many people think they punish unscrupulous, shifty foreign manufacturers who aren’t playing fair and “dumping” their shoddy wares on American markets at prices below American producers’ costs, but that’s not true. Tariffs are sanctions and penalties imposed on American consumers for not paying enough. Governments regularly impose sanctions on other governments .. MORE
Regulation
How should we make housing more “affordable”?
The OC Register reports that a California judge has struck down a new law allowing as many as four units on a single lot: “The Legislature finds and declares that ensuring access to affordable housing is a matter of statewide concern and not a municipal affair,” SB 9 states. “Therefore, … (this law applies) to .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
My Weekly Reading for April 28, 2024
Yet Another Drug War Failure by Ted Galen Carpenter, antiwar.com, April 23, 2024. Excerpt: Despite such spectacular policy failures, drug warriors in the United States and other countries cling to hard-line strategies and refuse to face an inconvenient economic truth. Governments are not able to dictate whether people use mind-altering substances. Such vices have been .. MORE
Economics of Crime
Robert MacNeil’s Axiom
Pierre Lemieux’s excellent post on The Economist‘s dismissal of an argument against gun control reminded me of a line from, I think, one of Robert MacNeil’s books. He said, “It has always been axiomatic to me that easy access to firearms would lead to more crime, in particular, homicide.” See the problem? It’s not axiomatic. .. MORE
Incentives
The Economist‘s Irrational Fear
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
International Macroeconomics
The Centralization of Power
Hardly a day goes by without further evidence that the world is moving toward Viktor Orban-style authoritarian nationalism. Here’s the latest piece of evidence, from the WSJ: A small group of the former president’s allies—whose work is so secretive that even some prominent former Trump economic aides weren’t aware of it—has produced a roughly 10-page .. MORE
Incentives
Follow the Money
“Follow the money” is a phrase used in many detective shows and political thrillers. Look for how the villain spent money on or received money from, and there is your culprit. The same is true when examining economic and political decision-making. In today’s world, it is common to talk about rent seeking behavior on the .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
Is Nationalism Bad for Your Health?
In recent years, there has been increasing pressure to isolate the US from any sort of contact with the Chinese economy. The latest sector to be affected is healthcare, where there is a proposal to ban US drugmakers from contracting out various tasks to Chinese firms. Here’s The Economist: The knock-on effects for the Chinese .. MORE
Labor Market
How to Hobble the Fast-Food Industry and Fast-Food Jobs
One of the ideas that economists are most sure of is that when the price of something rises, other than due to something that shifts the whole demand curve, the quantity demanded falls. Conversely, when the price of something falls, the quantity demanded increases. This is not controversial in economics. Moreover, it’s so clear .. MORE
Economics and Culture
In Defense of Seeking the Truth
There have been some interesting developments with NPR recently. A long time veteran of the organization, Uri Berliner, wrote an essay lamenting that the organization has gone from and admittingly left-leaning but still rigorous and fair journalistic enterprise to a politically driven monoculture that lets ideology drive its reporting. NPR, he says, no longer facilitates .. MORE
Price Controls
Great Moments in Denying Reality
California has some of the strictest insurance regulations in the country. It is the only state where insurers are not allowed to base their rate hikes on catastrophe models — forward-looking calculations of risk — or the rising cost of reinsurance premiums, according to both Zimmerman and the Department of Insurance. Under current regulations, insurers are only .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Factoid and Ideas: King’s Horses Amok in London
Serious arguments, economic and moral, exist to justify the state (the central and sovereign apparatus of government). Serious objections to these arguments also exist. It is interesting to note that most people, including most economists, ignore both kinds. I thought about this when I read the funny factoid reported by the Wall Street Journal about .. MORE
Economics and Culture
It’s Not “Midwest Nice” to Break the Rules
Wisconsin comedian Charlie Berens has a great routine about 4-way stops in the Midwest. Midwest drivers are so nice and obsequious that they’ll endlessly wave the other guy on at the stop sign, even when they were there first and have the right-of-way. Like all good comedy, it’s funny because it’s at least a little .. MORE