Caleb Fuller Journalist Profile

Articles

How Paris Gets Fed

Jan 3, 2025 | mereeconomics.com | Caleb Fuller

The central question of economics is "how Paris gets fed," that is how billions of people cooperate on a global scale to procure food, clothing, and shelter, not to mention a whole lot more. Ever since Frederic Bastiat posed this thought experiment, food–and the marvel of the grocery store more generally–has been a staple of "mere economics" pedagogy the world's classrooms over. As it should be. Even so, the grocery store still gets short shrift as a pedagogical device.
El trabajo no es fuente de valor

Aug 9, 2024 | elindependent.org | Art Carden |Alvaro Vargas Llosa |Robert Murphy |Caleb Fuller

Muchos consideran que es injusto que algunas personas ganen mucho más que otras por trabajos que a primera vista lucen similares. Pensemos en el deporte profesional, donde recientemente se ha sabido que estrellas en ciernes como Caitlin Clark, Cameron Brink, Angel Reese y otras ganan una pequeña fracción de lo que ganan los jugadores masculinos de la NBA. El Biden no perdió . «¿Por qué las jugadoras de la WNBA ganan tan poco cuando sus homólogas de la NBA ganan tanto?
Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

Feb 29, 2024 | blog.independent.org | Caleb Fuller

Caleb S. Fuller • Thursday, February 29, 2024 3:20 PM PST Econ 101 instructors take note—a new illustration of the important microeconomic concept of incidence just dropped. Economists emphasize that there is a world of difference between legal and economic incidence.
Why Shareholder Firms Tend to Persist Over Worker-Owned Models

Feb 19, 2024 | blog.independent.org | Caleb Fuller

Over at AIER, my Mere Economics co-author reveals one weird trick for the working class to bloodlessly seize the means of production. I won’t steal Art’s thunder, but suffice it to say that this “revolution” would be voluntary every step of the way. Art’s clever essay demonstrates that capitalism allows for many experiments in production and living. The same can’t be said for (say) socialism.
This Time Isn’t Different

Feb 14, 2024 | blog.independent.org | Caleb Fuller |Adam Smith

William F. Buckley once defined a conservative as “Someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” With apologies to Buckley, we might define an economist as someone who stands athwart the contemporary public policy conversation, yelling, “This time isn’t different!”The last decade has demonstrated that economic insights painstakingly won over the course of centuries can be unlearned in the blink of an eye.
Why Is the Quality of Goods under Central Planning So Bad?

Oct 16, 2023 | blog.independent.org | Caleb Fuller

Caleb S. Fuller • Monday, October 16, 2023 2:25 PM PDT Why is the average quality of consumer goods so bad under central planning? For a peak behind the (literal) curtain, see this fascinating video:“Because socialism” is no answer to the quality of goods under socialism. That’s not an analysis.
Price Controls Destroy Coasean Bargains

Sep 8, 2023 | blog.independent.org | Caleb Fuller

A useful way to think about price controls is that they destroy mutually beneficial Coasean bargains. By a “Coasean bargain,” I mean an offer that takes the following form: “I’ll pay you to reduce this harm” or “I’ll compensate you for bearing this harm.”Consider minimum wage as an example of the former instance. Imagine factory workers on a hot summer day making $7.25 per hour.
Unemployment: Somewhere, USA

Jun 27, 2023 | blog.independent.org | Caleb Fuller |Gordon Tullock

As I pointed out a few months ago, empirical studies of the minimum wage have a way of stepping into a host of price-theoretic potholes. Among these pitfalls, there’s one in particular that seems underdeveloped. It relates to the margins of adjustment. Gordon Tullock emphasized the endless margins of adjustment available to employers in the face of a minimum wage constraint. In Tullock’s account, an employer responds to the minimum wage by shutting off the factory-floor AC on a hot summer’s day.
Marrying for Love

May 7, 2023 | blog.independent.org | Caleb Fuller

Caleb S. Fuller • Sunday, May 7, 2023 12:24 PM PDT Mises’ most memorable contribution is theargument of his 1922 book, Socialism, which leaves central planning in tatters. rarely, however, do many of the other insights of that great book get the attention they merit. rarely, for instance, do people recall Mises’ passage on the economics of marriage.
Our Economic Illiteracy – [your]NEWS

Mar 14, 2023 | yournews.com | Caleb Fuller

By Caleb Fuller | Mises.orgThe great economist Armen Alchian once observed, “Fortunately, societies have progressed despite almost universal ignorance of economic principles.” True. “Economics,” wrote Henry Hazlitt, “is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man.”True. No epoch is immune to the scourge of economic illiteracy. Yet, we find ourselves in a moment of especially unprecedented economic ignorance.