Russell Roberts's Blog, page 1430

Quotation of the Day…

… is the final paragraph of my favorite essay by one of my all-time favorite thinkers.  The essay, written in 1830, is by Thomas Babington Macaulay; its title is "Southey's Colloquies on Society":

It is not by the intermeddling of [English poet laureate] Mr. Southey's idol, the omniscient and omnipotent State, but by the prudence and energy of the people, that England has hitherto been carried forward in civilization; and it is to the same prudence and the same energy that we now look with comfort and good hope. Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest.

Quotation of the Day…

… is from the newly released collection of Bastiat's letters, The Man and the Statesman: The Correspondence and Articles on Politics; this quotation – from a letter that Bastiat wrote to Richard Cobden – is highlighted in James Grants's delightful review of this collection in today's Wall Street Journal:

I want not so much free trade as the spirit of free trade for my country.  Free trade means a little more wealth; the spirit of free trade is a reform of the mind itself, that is to say, the source of all reforms.

(HT Fred Dent)

Bryan Caplan on reason.tv

Nick Gillespie interviews Bryan about his parenting book. It opens with Gillespie reciting perhaps the greatest R-rated poem of all time, Phillip Larkin's anti-paean to parenting. Bryan takes it in stride. Not the R-rated part, but the challenge implicit in the poem.

The World is UNDERpopulated

While many myths compete with "the-world-is-over-populated-with-humans" myth for the honor of being the myth with least empirical and theoretical support, no myth surpasses the over-population myth in groundlessness and, really, absurdity pregnant with totalitarian impulses.  I like the take of the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby.

And see here just how out of touch with reality is the myth of over-population.  (HT Chris Meisenzahl)

Quotation of the Day…

… is from the latest column in the Washington Post by the national treasure known as George Will:

Richard Miniter, a Forbes columnist, is right: "Obama is not the new FDR, but the new Gorbachev." Beneath the tattered, fading banner of reactionary ["left-" (i.e., "not-") -DBx] liberalism, Obama struggles to sustain a doomed system. Democrats' dependency agenda — swelling the ranks of government employees, multiplying government-subsidized industries, enveloping ever-more individuals in the entitlement culture — is buckling under an intractable contradiction: It is incompatible with economic growth sufficient to create enough wealth to feed the multiplying tax eaters.

1,000,000 views and counting

The Fight of the Century now has over 1,000,000 views. It took about 12 weeks. We have a long way to go to catch Fear the Boom and Bust, so please watch and share.

Nick Gillespie interviews Vernon Smith

On the Somali Famine

Here's a letter to the Washington Post:

It's unspeakably tragic that thousands of Somalis are today starving to death ("U.N.: Famine in Somalia is killing tens of thousands," July 22).  And it's true that one proximate cause of this starvation is drought.  But blaming such starvation on weather conditions is lame; it is to confuse a proximate cause for a deeper cause – and a deeper cause that is avoidable through better policies.

The earth is full of people (such as residents the American southwest) who live in places that receive very little rainfall, or that endure prolonged droughts, yet who aren't remotely at risk of starving.  Understanding the starvation in Somalia requires an explanation of why Somalis enjoy no ready access, such as we have in America, to global supplies of food.  (There is, after all, no global drought.)  Such understanding demands also an explanation of why Somalis – unlike, say, farmers in rainfall-poor parts of California – don't use artificial irrigation and other modern techniques to ensure against drought and to increase crop yields.

Reasonable people can disagree over the reasons Somalia's economy prevents Somalis from escaping subsistence living conditions.  But explaining today's starvation in Somalia as being the result of drought is as helpful as, say, explaining growing world population as being the result of sex.  Deeper thinking is needed.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Some Links

The final version of Casey Mulligan's important new paper is published; it appears in the hot-off-the-epress issue of the B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics.  (An earlier version – the one I read – is here.)  The abstract:

Factor supply increases (depresses) output for many of the same reasons that the government spending multiplier might be less (greater) than one. Data from three 2008-9 recession episodes—the labor supply shifts associated with the seasonal cycle, the 2009 federal minimum wage hike, and the collapse of residential construction spending—clearly show that markets absorb an increased supply of factors of production by increasing output. The findings contradict the "paradox of toil" and suggest that government purchases and marginal tax rates reduce private consumption, even during the recession [link added].

Speaking of the weaknesses of Keynesian 'economics,' in today's Wall Street Journal Stanford University economist John Taylor writes:

Big government has proved to be a clumsy manager, and it did not stop with monetary and fiscal policy. Since President Obama took office, we've added on complex regulatory interventions in health care (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) and finance (the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act). The unintended consequences of these laws are already raising health-care costs and deterring new investment and risk-taking.

If these government interventions are the economic problem, then the solution is to unwind them. Some lament that with the high debt and bloated Fed balance sheet, we have run out of monetary and fiscal ammunition, but this may be a blessing in disguise. The way forward is not more spending, greater debt and continued zero-interest rates, but spending control and a return to free-market principles.

Cato's Sallie James makes a powerful case for ending the species of corporate welfare that is the Export-Import Bank of the United States.

EconLog's David Henderson reports on yet more of his e-debate with proud protectionist Ian Fletcher.

Carpe Diem's Mark Perry documents another instance of private markets doing what textbooks and popular notions hold can be done only by government: supplying unemployment insurance.  (Markets earlier made headway into this business, only to be thwarted by, among other politicians, F.D.R. -  that supposed great champion of working, and out-of-work, Americans.)

Dirk Mateer and Frank Stephenson explain how to use film clips to better convey to students the lessons of public-choice economics.

Bob Higgs on the debt-ceiling tussle.

Quotation of the Day…

… is from page 211 of David Friedman's indispensable 1973 book, The Machinery of Freedom; it occurs in the context of his discussion of contemporary American politics:

It seems more reasonable to suppose that there is no ruling class, that we are ruled, rather, by a myriad of quareling gangs, constantly engaged in stealing from each other to the great impoverishment of their own members as well as the rest of us.