A Bet Not Taken (But My Offer Of It Remains Open!)
TweetDavid Henderson reminded me today of this post of mine from nearly nine years ago in which I offered to bet $10,000 “that in not one of the next 20 years will the annual U.S. labor-force...
View ArticleThe Rust Belt Wasn’t Done In By Economic Competition
TweetHere’s a letter to a new correspondent. Mr. K__: You write: Life is much more than money. It is community, stability, family and neighbors. Who cares if tariffs slow economic growth or even stop...
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More on the Condition of U.S. Manufacturing
TweetHere’s a visualization of manufacturing output by country in 2018. In 2024, the Chinese produced $5.65 trillion worth of manufactured outputs (or $4.62 in 2018 dollars). The U.S. in 2024 produced,...
View ArticleGetting the Effects of Protective Tariffs Straight
TweetHere’s a letter to Yahoo!Finance. Editor: Your SmartAsset Team writes that “protective tariffs can help emerging industries and preserve jobs within a country” (“What Do Governments Typically...
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Quotation of the Day…
Tweet… is from page 3 of the late Stanford University economic historian Nathan Rosenberg’s “Introduction” to the 1994 collection of several of his papers – a collection titled Exploring the Black Box:...
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TweetMy intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, understands well the folly of those people who wrongly suppose themselves to be wiser-than-thou in rejecting Adam Smith’s observation that...
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Bonus Quotation of the Day…
Tweet… is from page 82 of David Schmidtz’s excellent 2023 book, Living Together: Political ideals are not points of convergence. The liberal political ideal is not that we embrace the same religion but...
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TweetJoshua Rauh and Gregory Kearney, writing in the Wall Street Journal, identify a perverse incentive that is corrupting academics, including economists. A slice: Unfortunately, today’s journalists...
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TweetGMU Econ alum Dominic Pino reviews Rainer Zitelmann’s In Defense of Capitalism. Two slices: Each of the first ten chapters presents a common anti-capitalist argument followed by an empirical...
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TweetDavid Henderson is understandably unimpressed by Nobel-laureate economist Michael Spence’s latest plea for industrial policy. Two slices: His case is, at best, flabby. It lacks any empirical...
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TweetReason‘s Nick Gillespie talks with Superabundance co-author Marian Tupy about Julian Simon, human creativity, and the myth of a universe of a fixed amount of resources. Nebraska’s Attorney...
View ArticleTo Advocate Industrial Policy Is to Pose As a Fortuneteller
TweetA correspondent continues to e-mail me to insist that I am unfair to the national-conservatives’ case for industrial policy. Mr. F__: You claim in your latest e-mail that I’m wrong to argue that I...
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TweetCharles Cooke describes the legal argument mustered to support Biden’s ‘forgiveness’ of student loans as “cynical and ludicrous.” A slice: There is no point in our mincing words. This is a lie. A...
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Quotation of the Day…
Tweet… is from page 124 of Arthur Diamond, Jr.’s, superb 2019 book, Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism: In a system of innovative dynamism, creative inventors will finds...
View ArticleUnder Strain
TweetHere we go again. A new strain, out of southern Africa, of the Covid-19 virus is being reported (as if new strains of such viruses are unexpected). Already in place are new restrictions on travel....
View ArticleSome Covid Links
TweetJay Bhattacharya on Twitter: Public health has earned the distrust of minority communities by promoting ideas that have harmed minorities differentially like “essential/non-essential”, lockdown,...
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What I Fear Is In Humanity’s Future
TweetOn a flight home yesterday (Tuesday), on United Airlines, from southern California to northern Virginia I was given this napkin. It depressed me deeply because it describes, in an approving –...
View ArticleThe March of Covidocratic Tyranny
TweetThe Biden administration will use OSHA to impose vaccine mandates or requirements of weekly testing on employees of large firms. This unprecedented government intervention isn’t the first piece of...
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What I Fear
TweetWhile the reaction to Covid-19 will not eventually result in humanity returning literally to a stone-age existence, I do fear that this cartoon captures an important reality about our future. The...
View ArticlePlease, No More Policy Voodoo
TweetHere’s a letter to a new correspondent: Mr. E___: Thanks for your e-mail in response to my linking earlier today to this essay on trade by David Henderson. You argue that Henderson’s case for free...
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