Wind Turbine Blues
I’m all for alternative sources of energy . . . providing that they actually produce enough to cover their costs. Sad to say, it’s beginning to look like wind power is for the birds, if not the bats....
View ArticleWhy Plant Crops?
With the financial crisis and bailout bill, our energy problems have been pushed off the front page. But they’re not gone. We still need energy to run our cars, homes, businesses, you name it. So, I...
View ArticleFear of Falling
The fear of falling is innate. Newborns have it. The fear of falling prices is different. What? Who fears falling prices? Politicians and investors and the big boys in big business, that’s who. When...
View ArticleA Cato Alert
President Obama suggests that all economists agree that the best way to dig the economy out of its giant hole is to dig that hole faster and harder. Too much debt? Pile on more. Consumers not “buying...
View ArticleEconomist-in-Chief
I’m not an economist. So take my advice with a grain of salt. Or two. But hold the pepper. I’m not the only non-economist. Our president isn’t one, either. Sure, he has economists on his staff, but...
View ArticleOur Limited Abilities Require Other Limits
Last week I asked, in effect, Who regulates the regulators? It does no good to say “the people,” because — as much as I want government to be ultimately controlled by the people — if you’re like me,...
View ArticleThe Costs of a Good Cause
Costs are what we give up for what we want. Focus only on a transaction, and that McChicken sandwich “costs” only a bit over a buck. But ultimately that McChicken costs you what you give up in your...
View ArticleWill They Ever Learn?
In which industries do prices and costs rise fastest? Those in which government is most involved. The process is no mystery. Regulate supply by limiting entry into the business — to “increase quality,”...
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Two Legacies
Two great economists died this month. Anna Schwartz, co-author with Milton Friedman of the classic A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, passed away last Thursday, at age 96. For reasons...
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Demands and Supply
A storm hits the east coast. Some homes are washed away. Others burn down. Millions lose power. Gasoline supplies are massively disrupted, even as mass transit is unusable for days. Obviously,...
View ArticleVideo: How Minimum Wage Laws Cause Unemployment
Thanks to the president, it’s the meme of the moment. Take it up a notch. With an understanding of the economics involved.
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Impossible, They Say
Modern economics takes a long, circuitous route to the old wisdom of classical political economy: Laissez faire is best. This ideal of free markets was pretty clearly established by Adam Smith, J.B....
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Protesting Gravity
The continuing, ramped-up protests of low wages at low-end service jobs, like McDonalds and (to some extent) Walmart, put many of us in a bind. On the one hand, a decent person wants others to be happy...
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The Zero Effect
The idea of hiking the legal minimum wage just doesn’t go away, alas. The usual thought experiment those with common sense use to elicit a modicum of sagacity in the minimum wage advocates’ addled...
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Bigots Hate Competition
Apparently, economics is hard. But some things are pretty straightforward. For example, both parties to a trade gain: it’s called “mutual benefit through exchange.” Another basic principle? Employers...
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Land Un-Grab?
When I took up the Cliven Bundy story, just before Bundy spewed his racist farragoes, I concentrated not on him, but on the broader issue: too much federal government ownership of real property in “the...
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Unsustainable Pseudo-thinking
One of the fashionable thought-killing words offered by the cliché-recycling movement is “sustainable.” In the common tongue, as spoken by many, many environmentalists, this term implies that we will...
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Robert Reich, Mythed Up
Consumer sovereignty is the idea that in markets consumers call the shots. In capitalism, most mass production is indeed for the masses, and the masses have a big say in what gets done. All profits and...
View ArticleNon-neutral Net Neutrality
Worried about its costs, Netflix has asked millions of customers to support so-called “net neutrality” policies to curtail the freedom of action of broadband companies like Comcast. Netflix, a huge...
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Chimps, Chumps, and the Minimum Wage
It’s time to talk minimum wage laws again! Confession: I tend to understand some issues on the level of logic — of, even, common sense. A prohibition (which is what a minimum wage law is, forbidding...
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