ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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I aggree with everything except "it costs you nothing" part. I have not finished Tyler's latest book yet, but I think he argues against exactly that kind of reasoning.
it costs you nothing
Are you still taking nominations for most ridiculous sentence about economics? Why not just say "the benefits outweigh the costs"? That's at least conceivably true.
Even if upbringing has no effect on adult lives, which I doubt, childhood is a big chunk of your child's life, so why not make it a happy chunk?
Partial and William - I guess you're right, I would have more free time if my kids were perpetually in terror of me, and tried to stay as far away from me as possible.
Except that they'd probably do a terrible job with all the chores because of the fear, and I'd have to do them over again, which would suck up all that free time.
hrmmmm.
Like Partial spectator and William, I take issue with "it costs you nothing". Probably the hardest thing about parenting, and the most important, is to continually get up off the couch, suspend/abandon your conversation, put down your book, stop working, etc. to take care of your children's immediate needs. But the benefits DO outweigh the costs. I believe in the theory that children have needs that relate to their developmental stage and must be met or the result is stunted emotional development. The cost of stopping what I'm doing in order to help my child is almost always lower than that.