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Oct 30, 2024 | 
econlib.org | Scott Sumner |David Henderson |Walter Edward Block
Almost every single day, I seem to encounter at least one article that I find highly annoying. In many cases, it involves a bad government policy. And most of those bad policies are aimed at addressing very real problems, but the cost of the policy ends up exceeding the benefit. Consider the sport of snow skiing. If I had my way, I’d make it impossible for skiers to sue ski slopes when they injured themselves while skiing. I don’t expect my idea to be adopted.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
econlib.org | David Henderson |Walter Edward Block |Pierre Lemieux
I just learned from Condi Rice yesterday that my long-time Hoover Institution colleague and long-time friend Tom Moore has died. He died on August 23. He was 93. Tom was an excellent economist. He wrote the article titled “Trucking Deregulation” in The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics, 1993, which later, after the rights reverted to me, became The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
econlib.org | Walter Edward Block |Pierre Lemieux |David Henderson
The minimum wage law is a snare and a delusion. It preys upon the weakest economic actors in the land. Before the advent of this pernicious law way back in the 1930s, the unemployment rate of whites and blacks, young and old, was about the same. There were no marked differences regarding joblessness for any of these categories. Nowadays, the unemployment rate of teenaged blacks is quadruple, yes, quadruple, that of middle aged whites. Why is this? The law is an unemployment law, not an employment law.
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May 25, 2024 | 
econlib.org | Pierre Lemieux |Scott Sumner |Walter Edward Block
A report from the Financial Times’s Beijing correspondent should leave everybody in the Western world laughing out loud (and the Chinese too if they were allowed to). It is only slightly exaggerated to say that the rulers of Western countries, and the US government at the first rank, have been dead scared of the Chinese government and the supposed mighty economy it runs with its visible fist.
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May 24, 2024 | 
econlib.org | Scott Sumner |Walter Edward Block |Kevin Corcoran
A few months back, The Economist had an article on the drug problem in Scotland. This statistic caught my eye:
Scots in the poorest areas are 16 times more likely to die a drug-related death than those in the richest places.
The difference between the overdose death rates for the rich and poor is too large to be attributed to mere coincidence. This discrepancy cries out for some sort of explanation.
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May 24, 2024 | 
econlib.org | Walter Edward Block |Kevin Corcoran |Tarnell Brown
Who’d have thunk it? Physicians have actually transferred a kidney from a pig to a human being, and the operation appears to have been a success (not for the pig; for the person!). The patient was helped by this transplant and her body did not reject the kidney she received as was initially feared.
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Nov 26, 2023 | 
econlib.org | Scott Sumner |Pierre Lemieux |Walter Edward Block
Last April, I did a post discussing the factors behind the severely restricted number of flights between the US and China. In recent months, the US government has allowed more flights, but only under the condition that Chinese airlines fly a much longer route between the two countries. US airlines had complained that they were at a competitive disadvantage, due to their inability to fly over Russian airspace because of the Ukraine sanctions dispute.
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Nov 26, 2023 | 
econlib.org | Pierre Lemieux |Walter Edward Block |David Henderson
A disquieting Wall Street Journal column reminds us of what classical liberals and libertarians have been repeating: the state, however useful it may be, is very dangerous. With hindsight, it is surprising how so few people have taken these voices seriously, perhaps because the lobster has been boiled quite slowly. The problem is not unique to the United States but may be especially dangerous here given the enormous extent of the president’s power.
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Nov 25, 2023 | 
econlib.org | Walter Edward Block |David Henderson |Scott Sumner
Airbnbs and VRBOs are out. What’s that you say? What are they? They are short term rentals. Residential occupants rent out their domiciles for anything from a day or two or three up to several weeks and maybe as long as a month or so. Perhaps the vendors go out of town for that stretch of time, and want to add a bit of spending money to their budgets. Maybe they are in the business of renting out residential real estate for such short time periods. Why are they on the way out?
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Nov 3, 2023 | 
yieldpro.com | Walter Edward Block
Profits have gotten a lot bad press. Perhaps second to private property (theft, according to Bakunin) profits are the devil incarnate in the view of some. In the star-studded movie “Reds,” the hero, played by Warren Beatty, was asked for his explanation of the cause of pretty much all that was wrong with the world. In response he uttered a one-word explanation, after a long poignant pause: Profits.
