Russell Roberts's Blog, page 260

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 130 of Thomas Sowell’s 2020 book, Charter Schools and Their Enemies (original emphases):

[S]chools exist for the education of children. Schools do not exist to provide iron-clad jobs for teachers, billions of dollars in union dues for teachers unions, monopolies for educational bureaucracies, a guaranteed market for teachers college degrees or a captive audience for indoctrinators. Those who want to see quality education remain available to youngsters in low-income minority neighborhoods must raise the question, again and again, when various policies and practices are proposed: “How is this going to affect the education of children?“

DBx: This excellent book was published one year ago today. Even more significantly, Thomas Sowell was born 91 years ago today. Happy Birthday, sir!

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Minimum-Wage Advocacy and “Intelligent Design”

(Don Boudreaux)

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An enormous amount of intellectual energy is spent attempting to discredit the basic economic analysis of minimum wages. Vast quantities of creativity and cleverness are devoted to efforts to discover reasons and evidence that allegedly show that legislated minimum wages do not necessarily have on low-skilled workers any of the negative impacts predicted by standard economic theory.

As regular readers of this blog know, I fully reject any such asserted demonstrations that minimum-wage legislation has no negative impacts on the welfare of low-skilled workers. All such supposed demonstrations are the epistemological equivalents of the many attempts, including those by the faux scientific proponents of so-called “intelligent design,” to disprove the general applicability of Darwin’s theory of evolution driven by natural selection.

I repeat: The desire of many people to deny the general applicability of the law of demand to the economic world is very much akin to the desire of many other people to deny the general applicability to the biological world of Darwinian natural selection. It’s a terrific irony that many individuals in the first group – that is, many individuals who toil earnestly to find ways to deny the general applicability of the law of demand to the economic world – are among the very first to point out correctly the absurdity of the efforts of members of the second group of people – that is, of those individuals who toil earnestly to deny the general applicability to the biological world of Darwinian natural selection.

Jonathan Haidt’s Humean explanation is, well, quite explanatory.

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 20 of Emma Griffin’s superb 2013 book, Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution:

It is time to think the unthinkable: that these writers [of memoirs by ordinary people during the industrial revolution] viewed themselves not as downtrodden losers but as men and women in control of their destiny; that the industrial revolution heralded the advent not of a yet ‘darker period’, but of the dawn of liberty.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 589 of the 1988 collection of Lord Acton’s writings (edited by the late J. Rufus Fears), Essays in Religion, Politics, and Morality; specifically, it’s a note drawn from Acton’s extensive papers at Cambridge University; (I can find no date for this passage):

American Revolution: The great point is that the letter of the law was against them. The absence of real oppression likewise. It was definitely an appeal to unwritten law, unchartered rights.

Steven Horwitz (1964-2021)

(Don Boudreaux)

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Yesterday brought the terrible news of Steve Horwitz’s death. Diagnosed a few short years ago with multiple myeloma, he fought this cancer aggressively and with aplomb. Alas, the cancer too quickly stole his life – the life of a splendid member of that most engendered of species, namely, superb and scholarly economists who both wish to, and excel at, communicating clearly with the general public.

Steve was also a wonderful human being.

Steve is a former student of mine; he excelled in a graduate course in Industrial Organization that I taught. I forget which year exactly; it was either 1987 or 1988. But I can tell you exactly where in the classroom Steve sat and engaged so creatively with the material. Steve was also a friend and co-author. Less than a year ago he and I – actually, mostly he – co-wrote this piece for the Detroit News in opposition to mask mandates.

Like many in Steve’s wide circle of friends, I’m still digesting this tragic news. Being on the road until late tonight, I will delay until later this week further and more complete reflections on Steve and his important legacy. For now, I share this note from yesterday from Institute for Humane Studies president Emily Chamlee-Wright and, below that, a link to Pete Boettke’s post on Steve.

To the Good People of Mercatus and IHS,

It is with the heaviest of hearts that I convey the sad news that Steve Horwitz died early this morning from complications related to his battle with myeloma. Steve’s family was with him when he passed, and he was not in any pain at the end.

There is so much to say, and yet, words fail me. They are inadequate to express what Steve meant to the Mercatus-IHS community and they cannot provide the comfort I so desperately wish I could offer Sarah and the family. But three things need to be said.

First, Steve was equal parts mind and spirit and he brought the fullness of that balance to his work. The sharpness of his intellect was only matched by the depth of compassion he felt for those who are least free. Steve was driven to do more and think more and write more and teach more because he had an abiding conviction that the ideas of a free society are the key to every human being having the opportunity to create, contribute, find joy, and thrive.

Second, Steve was deeply, passionately, madly in love with his wife Sarah. (Young Hearts, take note of their example. It would be hard to do better.) Sarah is part of our community too. She has asked for some time before corresponding, but in the weeks and months to come, we will be an important source of support and strength for her, so don’t hold back. If you have a story to tell, she’ll want to know how Steve touched your life.

Finally, and here’s a lesson for us all, Steve left it all on the field.  There’s no more important work we can do than to advance the ideas that underlie the good society. Steve believed that to his core and lived that commitment right up to the end. The best way to honor Steve is to emulate his example.

Steve, we will miss you, my brother.

Emily

P.S. When it feels appropriate to do so, I will share information about opportunities to celebrate Steve’s life. In the meantime, you can read more about Steve’s story here. https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/stevehorwitz

…..

And here’s Peter Boettke on Steve.

Minimum Wages Reduce the Bargaining Power of Low-Skilled Workers

(Don Boudreaux)

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In my latest column for AIER, I do my best to bust the myth that low-skilled workers have too little bargaining power in a free market – and also to show that this bargaining power is reduced by minimum-wage legislation. A slice:

More important than the fact that low-skilled workers have few specific job skills, the single greatest source of low-skilled workers’ bargaining power is price. If they can offer to work at whatever wages make them attractive to employers, low-skilled workers have adequate bargaining power – in fact, they have no less bargaining power than is had by the highest-skilled workers. The only workers in the modern American economy without adequate bargaining power are those whose freedom to offer better terms – for example, lower wages or fewer fringe benefits – to employers is taken away by government.

Consider a worker whose skills enable him to produce no more than $14.50 per hour. If the minimum wage is $15 per hour, this worker literally has no power to bargain on the wage margin. This worker is prevented by government from making the following offer to employers: “If you employ me, I’ll work for $14.50 per hour.” The absence of this bargaining power is caused directly by government regulation – and the fact that that regulation might today be well-intentioned does nothing to alter this awful reality for those workers who are prevented by the state from bargaining for employment by offering to work at hourly wages below the legislated minimum.

Now compare this worker’s unfortunate fate to that of a seller, such as McDonald’s, of fast food. We can reasonably call such a restaurant “low-skilled.” After all, what it offers for sale is more basic and less able to produce epicurean delights than are the offerings of Michelin-starred restaurants, or even of the items on the menus of restaurants such as Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.

It’s accurate to describe McDonald’s offerings as being much less skilled at pleasing most people’s taste buds and dining wishes than are the offerings of higher-end restaurants. Yet no one alleges that McDonald’s therefore suffers from inadequate bargaining power in selling its hamburgers.

The reason McDonald’s and other fast-food eateries have bargaining power equal to that of the finest restaurants in Paris, New York, and New Orleans is that restaurants – including low-end ones such as McDonald’s – are free to price their menu items at levels that will attract willing buyers.

There is, though, one profoundly important difference between low-value foods such as fast-food hamburgers and low-skilled workers: Today’s low-value food is destined, by its nature, to remain low-value food. McDonald’s hamburgers will not be improved over time into haut cuisine for which diners will pay high prices. Fast-food burgers will never become ‘highly skilled,’ relative to fancy restaurant meals, at pleasing diners’ palates.

In contrast, today’s low-skilled workers are not destined by their nature to remain low-skilled workers. One – and perhaps the single most – important source of higher skills is job experience. Because minimum-wage legislation prevents many workers from acquiring more skills today – the reason being that such legislation prices these workers today out of the job market – this legislation prevents these workers from acquiring today the mix of higher skills and more experience that each could then use tomorrow to bargain for different, better-paying jobs.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 1 – it’s the opening line – of Thomas Sowell’s magnificent 1995 work, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy:

Dangers to a society may be mortal without being immediate.

Some Non-Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Richard Ebeling defends the reputation of Milton Friedman. A slice:

He [Zachary Carter] is aghast that Friedman could so absurdly believe that the fundamental problem surrounding race relations in South Africa was government intervention in imposing highly rigid social and economic segregation laws between whites and blacks in practically every aspect of everyday life. Mr. Carter seems to have not done any homework on other writings that explain in great detail how apartheid came about in the 1940s, and for what economic purposes to benefit selected groups in the white community.

He might have had a better understanding if he had looked through William H. Hutt’s The Economics of the Color Bar (1964) or Walter E. Williams’ South Africa’s War Against Capitalism (1989). He would have discovered that it was precisely to prevent the integrational opportunities and outcomes that open and competitive markets make possible that segments of the white community turned to the anti-competitive and race-separating coercive powers of the state. After all, if separation of the races came “naturally” to different peoples, and if white farmers, professionals, manufacturers, and workers were really “inherently” superior to blacks, then why was it necessary to impose domestic monopoly protectionism on so many segments of the society to ward off potential black competitors? (See my article, “South Africa and Ending Apartheid: The Free Market Road Not Taken”.)

George Will rightly argues that “[a]ttacking ‘merit’ in the name of ‘equity’ is a prescription for mediocrity.” A slice:

Sever merit from the social mechanisms that allocate social rewards, and the idea of personal responsibility must go, too. And also the aspiration for an open society in which individual striving rather than government — political power — determines who thrives.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy decries the utter irresponsibility of most members of Congress. A slice:

If anybody believes that financing that infrastructure bill with debt will create jobs, pay for itself, and grow the economy, prepare to be disappointed. As I’ve reported many times in the past, the economic literature doesn’t support this, especially in the short term and when the spending is done at the federal level.

My GMU Econ colleague Dan Klein explores the baneful consequences on us of governmentalization.

And my newest GMU Econ colleague Vincent Geloso explains why school choice matters on fronts in addition to that of academic achievement.

My GMU Econ colleague Bryan Caplan has a profound understanding of human nature.

My GMU Econ colleague Larry White writes about stablecoins.

Ron Bailey reports that the middle class across the globe has tripled in size since 2000.

“How ‘Experts’ Abused Science to Saddle America with the Microaggression Mania” – that’s the title of George Leef’s latest. A slice:

However, a law review article entitled “Microaggressions, Questionable Science, and Free Speech” by professors Edward Cantu and Lee Jussim argues strongly that, as science, the microaggression research is laughably weak, the scholars behind it do not respond as scientists should when their work is questioned, and the project of trying to root out microaggressions has socially caustic and legally pernicious effects.

Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Frank Lechner documents and decries the “pandemic of illiberalism” that began in early 2020. A slice:

But it was easy to use Covid fears to justify extraordinary steps that enabled governments to exercise unrestrained power and trample basic civil rights.

It was easy to extend temporary emergency measures first adopted for the specific purpose of protecting health systems by “flattening the curve.” As Michael Betrus recounts, even as the original rationale faded, lockdowns became permanent in many places, shutting down businesses, schools, and churches for long periods in all but five U.S. states (and most European countries). For the sake of “preventing transmission” and “saving lives,” various governments claimed special powers to restrict freedom of movement, assembly, and worship, and to suspend children’s right to an adequate education. While some sought support from legislatures, others, including a number of U.S. governors, ruled by fiat. “Covid mania” made liberty a “nuisance.”

Nick Gillespie spoke with chef Andrew Gruel about surviving the Covidocracy. A slice:

Q: Last summer, you said the enhanced federal and state unemployment benefits also made it hard for you to staff your restaurant. How so?

A: In the very beginning, when the government offered it, I think it was $600 on top of what the state was offering for unemployment. Here in California, it was about $1,100 a week. Initially we did lay everybody off, because we didn’t know what was going to happen. As we started helping out with the community and building some business, our business came back, and we needed those employees back. So we started reaching out to everybody. A lot of people were like, “Look, I’m making $1,100 right now not working. I’ve got books I want to read. I’ve got classes I want to take online.”

If I was 19 years old and I could make $1,500 as a server working 50 hours a week, or I could make $1,100 sitting at home, reading books, learning an instrument, heck, I would do it too.

Who’d a-thunk it?

Allison Pearson draws an important lesson from the recent fall of a high-profile hypocritical Covidocrat. A slice:

Am I being too harsh? “Give the guy a break!,” I hear some readers cry. At a time of national emergency, Mr Hancock has had one of the most stressful jobs. The pressure must have been immense. Surely, we can extend some leeway if he strayed.

Under normal circumstances, I would agree. We are all humble sinners and a man or woman’s private peccadillos shouldn’t disqualify them from doing their job. But no such understanding or humanity – not a sliver of mercy – has been shown by the Secretary of State or this Government to members of the public who have broken often cruel and arbitrary rules. Remember how we watched in horror as police arrested a retired nurse as she tried to drive her 97-year-old mother away from a care home. Hundreds of thousands of people have departed this life without a last touch or kiss from their best beloveds because the restrictions forbade it so relatives sobbed in the carpark because Matt Hancock said it must be so. Almost 30,000 children have been put on anti-depressants yet just one positive test (without any Covid symptoms) can still send an entire year group home to self-isolate for ten lonely days. Parents know this is insanity, but they must suck it up because that prating popinjay Hancock tells them it’s vital to keep us “safe”.

And here’s Janet Daley on the fall of the tyrannical Covidocrat Matt Hancock. A slice:

This would seem to be a good moment, what with one thing and another, to reassess Government policy on Covid. We might start with what was generally thought to be Matt Hancock’s most stupendously successful programme: the messaging campaign that so effectively spread fear and trepidation through the country that, even now, an astonishing proportion of the population express a reluctance to come out of hiding.

The seeding of this terror – and the willingness of the public to accede to it – was truly shocking to those who believed the British to be brave and freedom-loving almost to the point of recklessness. How could a people who survived a world war with such courage and unfailing rationality be willing to submit, with scarcely a murmur of dissent, to often illogical and unjustified restrictions on their personal freedom?

The most alarming interpretation of this phenomenon was that somehow this pandemic – unlike previous ones which were almost equally severe – and the Government’s attitude to it has actually altered the national character. For whatever complex reasons, this experience has pushed Britain – which once astonished the world with its unbowed resilience – into a state of chronic hyper-anxiety which now cannot be reversed.

Ross Clark reports from the once-free country of Britain.

“What’s going on under the masks?” asks Robert Wright.

Sean Walsh asks: “Is government ever justified in the weaponisation of fear?” A slice:

But surely, if we agree that it is wrong for the State to terrify us, is it not also the case that we – the adults to their children – have an obligation not to be terrified? Aristotle pointed out that we owe obligations not just of action but of feeling. It is wrong to live in fear. And while the Government had the bigger weapons, there has been a certain pusillanimity on the part of the rest of us when it comes to telling them where to go. We have failed to be David and continue to genuflect to the Goliath of the State. There is a danger that we capitulate and collude in that idea that we are merely units of data.

What’s that I heard about Australia having escaped SARS-CoV-2 and the threat of the lockdown straw man?

Howard Husock calls for an end to what should never have existed in the first place – namely, a CDC-issued moratorium on rental-housing evictions.

Who’d a-thunk It?

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a headline in the Wall Street Journal: “Americans Are Leaving Unemployment Rolls More Quickly in States Cutting Off Benefits.”