Russell Roberts's Blog, page 1537

Some Links

Writing at Foxnews.com, my former GMU student Alex Nowrasteh defends birthright citizenship.

In this video, the great Tom Palmer debates free trade with the duplicitous multiplicitous Lou Dobbs – Judge Napolitano moderates.  (HT Andy Roth)

In Slate, Jack Shafer exposes the myth that America's roads are deteriorating.  (HT Carrie Conko)

AEI's Andrew Biggs, in The Atlantic, makes the case that government employees are over-paid.

Cato's Director of Financial Regulation Studies, Mark Calabria – a...

David Kennedy on the Great Depression

The latest EconTalk is David Kennedy discussing his book, Freedom from Fear, the Great Depression, and the parallels, if any between then and now. Lots of interesting insights into Hoover, Roosevelt, and our current situation.

Use Spoons Rather than Shovels

Here's a letter to a local DC radio station:

Program Directo, WTOP Radio

Dear Sir or Madam:

During today's noon hour your anchor interviewed an "expert" who argued that free trade is fine when the economy is at or near full-employment, but that protectionism is justified when unemployment is unusually high.  The "expert" reasoned that protectionism creates jobs.

Nonsense.

If this "expert's" policy advice were sound, then why stop with protectionism?  During recessions government...

In a Funk Over Trade

Here's a letter to the Baltimore Sun:

Arguing that trade with foreigners helps foreigners and harms Americans, Alfred Funk asks "Today I am wearing my Indonesian shirt and my pants from China.  Do we really need an economist to tell us what's happening in our country?" (Letters, August 16).  I humbly submit that the answer is yes.  Contrary to Mr. Funk's allegation, when we Americans trade with foreigners we help not only the foreigners with whom we trade, we help also ourselves.

For evidence...

Leave Us Alone

Here's a letter to the Boston Globe:

Joanna Weiss asserts that the lack of government-mandated paid maternity leave in the United States is "a sign of how little our society values childrearing" ("Family values?" August 15).

I have a different take: the lack of government mandated paid maternity leave in the United States is a sign of how much – at least relative to many other countries – our society values freedom of contract and the voluntary choices of adults over the paternalistic commands...

Some Links

Amity Shlaes explains that "lousy lawmakers, not low taxes, created fiscal woes. (HT James McClure)

Boston Globe conservative-libertarian columnist Jeff Jacoby supports birthright citizenship in America.  Here's his ringing conclusion:

The immigration debates may churn, but about this much the Constitution is unequivocal: Anyone born in America is an American. Our nation has been enriched — not "overrun" — because of birthright citizenship. The 19th-century nativists who feared otherwise were...

Getting Real

Matt Ridley is rationally pessimistic about locovorism and other enthusiasms currently in vogue among 'environmentalists' who are cossetted by capitalist modernity.  Here's a slice of Matt's superb post:

There is something terribly wrong with the standard litany we recite about the environment. It just is not true that extravagant western lifestyles come at the expense of nature. The more I see of the world, the more persuaded I am that human prosperity is actually good for wildlife, because...

They Come Here to Acquire Wealth?? Horrors!

Here's a letter to the Washington Times:

Haydee Pavia writes that "The majority of [Mexican:] illegal aliens come here to attain the American dream and take it back to their native country.  These scofflaws don't come here because of idealism, but for the wealth they can acquire and one day take back to their native country" (Letters, August 14).

Suppose that Ms. Pavia's claim about immigrants' motives is correct.  So what?  The vast majority of these immigrants acquire their wealth by working...

What Say You, Keynesians?

One data point proves nothing – but it is suggestive that Germany's economy (including employment) is starting to boom (as reported here by The Economist) while the US economy continues to sputter: government in the former nation is following a policy of (relative) fiscal austerity while government in the latter nation is following a policy of wild-spending and deficit-bloating fiscal expansion.

Some Links

Judge Andrew Napolitano interviews Thomas Sowell on FreedomWatch.

Speaking of Sowell, Carpe Diem's Mark Perry quotes him.

A fascinating graph from Bill Easterly over at Aid Watch.

Josh Wright, a colleague over at GMU Law, argues that some regulations of alcohol distribuion are dangerous.