Russell Roberts's Blog, page 1531

Hoover vs. Roosevelt

Here is a five minute excerpt from my interview with David Kennedy. He compares Hoover and Roosevelt's economic policies in response to the Great Depression. His answer surprised me.

And please let me know in the comments if I should do these shorter excerpts more often.

Pollution Trends

Pollution trends – here and here.  (And I know that, for at least some pollutants, the trends were also downward – that is, good – prior to 1970.)  (HT Ross Kaminsky)

Some Links

Shikha Dalmia explains that the G.M.'s new I.P.O. is meant to Invigorate Political Opportunities for Democrats.

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby reports that "Cash for Clunkers" was a colossal clunker on both economic and environmental grounds.

Bob Higgs gets more insight from yield curves.

Thank goodness for small victories.  (HT Andy Roth)

Guests at The Economist ponder the reason(s) behind the strength of Germany's economic recovery.  This line from Carmen Reinhart is important:

Germany was...

Whack-a-Mole

No modern myth dies harder than the familiar claim – today repeated in the Los Angeles Times by one Joan Mortenson – that "It was the massive spending of World War II that finally ended the Depression."

Between 1941 and 1945 Uncle Sam drew into his military 16 million persons – that was 22 percent of the pre-war labor force.  With so many workers then militarized, mostly through conscription, there's no evidence that wartime spending restored the labor market to health.  And while real GDP...

Secure Our Freedom

In my most recent column for the Foundation for Economic Education, I argue again for eliminating numerical quotas on immigration into the United States.

The Gander Is At Least As Guilty as the Goose

Here's a letter to the Wall Street Journal:

Alexander Koukoulas says that "power rates do not include the environmental costs associated with … fossil-fuel" (Letters, Aug. 30).

Suppose this claim is true.  Mr. Koukoulas's conclusion that government should therefore subsidize green technologies doesn't follow.  Indeed, his conclusion is made suspect by the same logic that leads him to believe that fossil-fuel prices are too low.

If fossil-fuel prices don't reflect the full costs of fossil-fuel...

Bambi turned into Godzilla

Walter Russell Mead takes environmentalists to task for turning their back (and their minds) on what made their movement come to life–a skepticism about experts' ability to steer complex systems.

He Can't Know

Here's a letter to the Wall Street Journal:

Alexander Koukoulas repeats the familiar assertion that "Today's power rates do not include the environmental costs associated with fossil-fuel extraction, the burning of these fuels and their production of greenhouse gases" (Letters, Aug. 30).

Perhaps.  But perhaps not.  Fossil-fuel production and consumption are taxed quite heavily.  As found by Scott Hodge of the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, in 2008 the oil industry alone paid more than $90 billion...

Low-Cost Explanation of Cost

Do you want to really, deeply, profoundly understand cost in ways that even most economists don't quite understand it?  Read James M. Buchanan's Preface to his little 1969 masterpiece, Cost and Choice.  Even better, of course, is to read the entire book.  But the Preface itself – standing alone – is a work of genius that brilliantly gets across the main point of this important book.

I, Fuel Pump

Here's overwhelming – and fun – evidence that markets work.  I wonder if this author, James May (who seems to grasp, at least intuitively, sound economics), has ever read Leonard Read's exquisite essay "I, Pencil." (HT Dan Moore)