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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
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Free Markets
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
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
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
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
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
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
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Browse our archive of posts by author last nameBooks: Reviews and Suggested Readings
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
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
The YouTube algorithm is a mysterious thing. It’s supposed to recommend videos you might like, based on videos you’ve watched and rated before, but as far as I can tell the recommendations are generated randomly by a half-asleep chimpanzee. Still, just as broken clocks are still right twice a day, random suggestions can manage to .. MORE
Adam Smith
What do we desire from our lives and our work? In October of 2023, I participated in a debate at my college, Western Carolina University, regarding whether gender affirming care for minors should be banned. When it was my turn, I mostly stuck to the facts. I cited medical organizations, doctors, and meta-analyses. Though we were .. 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
What is Humanomics?1 It sounds like a combination of human and economics. And indeed this book by Vernon Smith and Bart Wilson can be read as an attempt to reintroduce the human component into economics. It can be read as a criticism of modern economics and as the presentation of a substitute for it. It .. 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
In this book I have supplemented “liberal science” with the term “reality-based community,” by which I mean the social network which adheres to liberal science’s rules and norms…. The community’s interactions are structured and elaborate and amount to much more than just the sum of its individuals’ doings, and the essential enablers, connectors, and transmitters .. MORE
It seems to me your argument is actually that a State is a luxury good. Only the most wealthy states can apparently afford state-socialism (because of trying to "keep up with the Joneses"?).
Robert EV, April 28