EconLog Archive
Adam Smith
Adam Smith, George Orwell, and Rules for Writing
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith used rules about writing as a metaphor for rules of conduct. He examines conduct by two different measures. In one measure, he considers what rules one would need to follow to, in my inelegant paraphrase, avoid being an actively scummy person. On the other hand, he also considers .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
Getting “Screwed” on Trade?
Back in February, Donald Trump claimed that the European Union was formed to “screw the US” on trade. With the reimposition and then the repausing of tariffs on the European Union, the Trump Administration has repeated that claim, sometimes including that a value-added tax (VAT) also exists to screw Americans. Of course, these are silly .. MORE
Liberty
June is Liberty Month
Celebrate the liberty trifecta on a site funded by, appropriately enough, the Liberty Fund. Five years ago, I didn’t even know why Apple put Juneteenth on my Mac calendar. I just assumed that it was a play on words. And then I checked. Juneteenth really is rightly celebrated as the end of slavery in America. .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Political Violence in Minnesota and Elsewhere
Political violence is violence for political reasons. More precisely and to avoid circularity, the difference between political violence and ordinary violence is that the former is motivated by resistance to, or promotion of, the imposition of some collective choices on others. For example, “the left” wants to impose redistribution (of money and other advantages of .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Basic Public-Choice Analysis of Attacking Iran
Public choice theory and its methodological-individualist foundations can be illustrated with a currently hot question: Will President Trump order an attack on Iranian military assets? It is, of course, not “the American people” who will decide; nobody has had lunch with him or her. (On this point, see my Independent Review article “The Impossibility of .. MORE
College Economics Topics
Teaching College Students About Money & Cryptocurrency
Introduction: This teaching note provides college instructors with guidance on teaching students about money, including what it is, what it is not, and distinctions between different forms like fiat money and cryptocurrency. Teaching college students about money is one of the easiest tasks. They arrive in class with a strong interest in money, motivated by .. MORE
Free Markets
Lessons from Chinese History
The Economist has an interesting review of a new book entitled Peak Human, by Johan Norberg. This caught my eye: Song emperors were much keener on the rule of law than their predecessors, who tended to rule by whim. To enforce predictable rules, they hired lots of officials via meritocratic exams. The first Song emperor .. MORE
Economics and Culture
Gates, Giving, and Government
Bill Gates has for many years been focusing on philanthropic projects through the Gates Foundation. He recently announced an end date for this endeavor. As Bill Gates put it in his recent announcement: I will give away virtually all my wealth through the Gates Foundation over the next 20 years to the cause of saving .. MORE
Government Growth
The “Big Beautiful Bill” and the Wisdom of Friedman
President Trump has fended off Republican criticisms of his “big, beautiful [budget] bill” by declaring that a vote against it is a vote for “the biggest tax increase” in American history, an estimated $4 trillion over a decade. The hidden irony is that, as the late Milton Friedman warned a half century ago, even if .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
RFK Jr. Conducted a Pointless Vaccine Purge
The Wall Street Journal ran a letter co-authored by Charley Hooper and me today (print version tomorrow). I have hesitated to quote more than 2 paragraphs, but I think my contract that allows full quotation only after 30 days applies to my paid work, not my free work. So I’ll take the chance and quote .. MORE
Macroeconomics
Mission Accomplished?
A recent Bloomberg article suggested that the Fed should declare victory over inflation: Granted, it may feel premature, if not foolhardy, to declare “mission accomplished” on inflation. It’s not just the rise in tariffs and the fall in immigration; there are a lot of structural factors in the economy pointing to more inflation: more debt, .. MORE
Regulation
My Weekly Reading for June 15, 2025
First, to all the fathers out there, Happy Father’s Day. Walmart and Amazon Are Exploring Issuing Their Own Stablecoins by Gina Heeb, AnnaMaria Andriotis, and Josh Dawsey, Wall Street Journal, June 13, 2025 (electronic edition) Excerpt: A move to launch crypto-based payments by Walmart or Amazon that bypasses the traditional payments system would send shivers .. MORE
Economic History
Back to the Seventeenth Century
The conflict between the American and Chinese governments about the restriction of exports—rare earths in one direction and other goods in the other direction—has been branded a new “supply chain” trade war. The Wall Street Journal wrote (“Supply Chains Become New Battleground in the Global Trade War,” June 11, 2025): A key lesson from the .. MORE
Monetary Policy
Seigniorage
In my June 10 post on the penny, I wrote: The U.S. government makes a pretty penny (pun intended) on seigniorage. It’s not as much as it used to be because more and more people use credit cards and even cryptocurrency to buy goods and services. Still, it’s a good amount. The biggest gain from .. MORE
Business Economics
The Marvels of a Flight
As I write this piece, I’m about to board an airplane. I’m in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but in just over 13 hours I’ll be in Zurich, Switzerland. In the 19th century, not even the wealthiest imaginable person would have been able to travel this quickly. Indeed, the entire wealth of the world could not have .. MORE
Politics and Economics
The Me Decade
Tom Wolfe once designated the 1970s as “The Me Decade”. It seems to me that this label better applies to the 2020s. Consider this action by the New York state Senate: ALBANY — Under cloak of darkness, the state Senate moved to help more than 130,000 reckless drivers avoid accountability in a middle-of-the-night watering down .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Lines, Legalism, Limits, and Likeness
For today’s post, further thoughts inspired by Barry Lam’s book Fewer Rules, Better People. When Lam puts forth arguments in favor of legalism in his book, one of the main values he argued legalism seeks to preserve is the idea that justice requires we treat like cases alike. If you and I engage in the same .. MORE
Competition
The Math Ain’t Mathing: Why High Tariff Schemes Will Always Lower GDP
A great deal of blame for declining GDP has been placed on the impact of imports by the national conservative and protectionist crowds. Pierre Lemieux does an excellent job explaining why imports have no direct impact on GDP here, so there’s really no reason to cover that ground again. It is sufficient to revisit the .. MORE
Central Planning
The Curious Task
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” –FA Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, pg 76 Hayek wrote these words back in 1988, but they could apply just as easily today. The past two months have demonstrated in .. MORE
Politics and Economics
Borrow Billions for Babies?
[Given the recent American trend of political alliteration, I was thinking of entitling this Build Back Better By Borrowing Billions for Big Beautiful Baby Bonds.] The administration has proposed giving newborn babies (whose parents have Social Security numbers) a savings account containing $1,000, which must be saved at least until the child reached the age .. MORE
Economic Education
EconLog Price Theory: Cash Transfers
We’re bringing back price theory with our series on Price Theory problems with Professor Bryan Cutsinger. You can see all of Cutsinger’s problems and solutions by subscribing to his EconLog RSS feed. Share your proposed solutions in the Comments. Professor Cutsinger will be present in the comments for the next couple of weeks, and we’ll post his .. MORE