Russell Roberts's Blog, page 1535

Some Links

The Rational Optimist author Matt Ridley is the subject of this PBS Newshour segment.  And here's a longer take.

Writing in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Shikha Dalmia and Anthony Randazzo expose some Keynesian bubblicious foolishness – in China.

Steve Landsburg calls 'em as they are.

Bryan Caplan takes the Horwitz Challenge.  So will I.  My two are Cass Sunstein and the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  (I also very much respect – tho' I disagree with him more often than not – Michael...

An Hypothesis Easily Tested, Daily

Here's a letter to the Washington Times:

So the Obama administration removed from the Department of Labor's website that agency's study that found differences between women's and men's pay as resulting, not from discrimination, but from different career choices made by each sex ("Gender pay gap reflects choices, not bias," August 21).  Big deal.  Politically opportunistic fact-filtering is a bi-partisan tradition as newsworthy as mosquitoes in summer.

But to those persons who believe that...

The Emperor's Green Underwear Are Way Too Pricey

My close friend Roger Meiners, writing in today's Wall Street Journal, exposes one piece on nonsensical "stimulus" spending – a small but tellling tale of wasting other people's green.  Here are the first few paragraphs:

Ever-smiling Joe Biden recently popped into Bozeman, Mont., in his carbon-spewing Boeing 757. He came by to give a talk in Yellowstone Park about green jobs, stimulus money, and the "recovery summer." Let's look at one tiny piece of the green/stimulus jobs program that the...

Is using InTrade illegal?

Vice President Biden is an optimist. And he'd love to put his money where his mouth is, if only it were legal:

Vice President Joe Biden boldly predicted Friday that voters would reject a "Republican tea party" of extreme candidates and Democrats would retain control of Congress this November.

In a pep talk for the party's rank and file, the vice president challenged the widespread notion that significant losses in House races, and perhaps the Senate, could cost the party its comfortable...

Unleashing the power of Keynes

It turns out that the project that President Obama highlighted the other day–a police station renovation–was not a police station and wasn't funded by the stimulus package. The Columbus Dispatch explains (HT: Drudge):

A local project that President Barack Obama cited during a visit Wednesday to Columbus as an example of how the federal stimulus package has worked isn't actually being funded with stimulus dollars.

It turns out it's just "regular" federal spending:

The president spoke at the...

Locavores are loco

Don't miss this piece (HT: Tamara Kupfer) in the NYT by Stephen Budiansky. An excerpt:

But the local food movement now threatens to devolve into another one of those self-indulgent — and self-defeating — do-gooder dogmas. Arbitrary rules, without any real scientific basis, are repeated as gospel by "locavores," celebrity chefs and mainstream environmental organizations. Words like "sustainability" and "food-miles" are thrown around without any clear understanding of the larger picture of...

Deficit Deniers

Here's a letter to the New York Times:

Highly critical of persons calling for deep cuts in government spending to reduce budget deficits, Paul Krugman describes such budget hawks as members of "strange and savage cults, demanding human sacrifices to appease unseen forces" ("Appeasing the Bond Gods," August 20).

Funny – that's exactly how I describe Mr. Krugman and others who call for deep cuts in our standard of living to reduce global warming.  These climate hawks are indeed members of...

The Reality of Competition and the Theory of Monopoly

Regarding the debates in the comments section of this post on antitrust, you can find here a link to my and Burt Folsom's take, in the Fall 1999 Antitrust Bulletin, on whether or not Microsoft – and, before it, Standard Oil – exercised monopoly power.

Live Free Or Die

Here's a letter to the Baltimore Sun:

Vincent DeMarco thinks that among the justifications for Maryland's 'sin taxes' on cigarettes and alcohol is the fact that they "save lives" (Letters, August 19).

Let's grant that these taxes do, in fact, extend Marylanders' life-expectancies.  So what?  The lives of individuals are the property neither of any government nor of officious "public interest" groups such as the one that Mr. DeMarco leads.  The life of each individual Marylander belongs to that...

Which One Do You Share?

Competing visions of America.  (HT Walter Williams)