EconLog Archive
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
Joe Weisenthal on jobs and migration
I saw an interesting tweet by Joe Weisenthal, discussing the question of what determines interstate migration: This is the classic chicken and the egg problem—which comes first? I view this question as an example of the fallacy of composition—what is true for the individual is not always true for the group. I suspect that Weisenthal .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Murphy on Economic Philosophy
I was thrilled to join Nicholls State University student DJ Insomniac of KNSU Radio on his podcast “Philosophicast.” We discussed the history of economic thought from Adam Smith to Vernon Smith, and many things in between. You can listen to the whole thing here.
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Fewer Rules, Better People: What Lam Gets Right
Barry Lam’s Fewer Rules, Better People: The Case for Discretion raises a number of interesting arguments, and I think he makes a compelling argument for expanding the role of discretion. Early in the book, Lam suggests his argument would seem unappealing to libertarians, on the grounds that to the libertarian, “Top-down authority in general is .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
America is a Manufacturing Powerhouse
A recent Bloomberg article by Dan Wang and Ben Reinhardt had some interesting things to say about US manufacturing. Instead of imposing high tariffs, they suggested that the US encourage foreign investment into facilities producing goods in America. I particularly liked this paragraph: But the more that Trump makes the country captive to his impulses—whether .. MORE
Adam Smith
Tariffs as Part of An Optimal Tax System
Writing at the Hoover Institution’s Defining Ideas publication (“Clearing the Air on Tariffs and Deficits,” 24 April 2025), co-blogger David Henderson mentions two plausible arguments for a non-zero tariff. One of those is within an optimal tax regime: One other intellectually respectable argument for tariffs is that they are part of an optimal tax structure. Our .. MORE
Liberty
Limits on Self-Ownership?
Frequent commenter Monte, who commented on my blog post titled “Mind Your Own Business!”, asked “Do Libertarians believe that government should play a role in setting limits on self-ownership?” I didn’t answer in the comments because I think the question is of more-general interest, and only a small percent of readers read the comments. .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
The Problem of Extreme Cases
John Stuart Mill famously wrote, about pushing principles to their logical limit, that “unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case” (On Liberty). This is not obvious, for extremes often produce antinomic or non-generalizable results. One may perhaps affirm that stealing $25 from Elon Musk without anybody .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Fewer Rules, Better People: How To Expand Discretion
Barry Lam’s Fewer Rules, Better People: The Case for Discretion makes a series of second-order arguments for why discretion based on the spirit of the law should be expanded over legalism according to the letter of the law. But he doesn’t just make arguments for why things should be different from how they currently are. He .. MORE
Liberty
California’s Decline, and Slight Rebound, in Press Freedom
In two EconLog posts (“Canada’s Decline in Press Freedom,” August 24, 2021, and “Canada’s Decline in Press Freedom, Part 2,” December 14, 2021), I documented the fact that Canada’s federal government under Justin Trudeau was subsidizing journalism. This is an attack on press freedom. As I wrote in an article on this same issue .. MORE
Supply-side Economics
The Middle Income Trap
In America, the poor often face relatively high implicit marginal tax rates, because they lose many benefits as their incomes rise. The Economist has an article discussing a similar situation in the UK, which affects the upper middle class, those earning over £100,000: At £100,000, the removal of the tax-free allowance creates a 60% marginal .. MORE
Politics and Economics
Two More Examples of the Nationalist’s Dilemma
I’ve already done several posts on the internal contradictions of nationalism (see here, here and here). The Financial Times recently offered two more examples in a single issue. Before considering the first example, recall that a portion of Romania contains a large ethnic Hungarian population living in a region that was once a part of Hungary. .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Contradictions Can Be Revealing: A Current Example
Expressing a contradiction can show plain ignorance or cognitive impairment. It can also suggest a hypothesis or theory that explains the contradiction away. Consider a current example. On the one hand, President Donald Trump argued that he would be a fool not to accept from a foreign autocrat the gift of a $400-million airplane (“Republicans .. MORE
Business Economics
My Weekly Reading for May 18, 2025
German Censorship Highlights Europe’s Eroding Free Speech Protections by J.D. Tuccille, Reason, May 12, 2025. Excerpt: Putting the main opposition party under an “extremist” designation subject to surveillance is a frightening step for a democracy. “One of the things I appreciate about America is that when the federal government attacks free speech there’s instant pushback .. MORE
Economic Growth
Cardwell’s Cage and How to Break Free
Donald Cardwell, a British historian of science and technology, famously observed that “no nation has been very creative for more than an historically short period.” Known as Cardwell’s Law, this dictum haunts many people concerned about the future of innovation. Can the United States, or any other country, break free of the cage of Cardwell’s .. MORE
Monetary Policy
Stablecoins and Monetary Policy
Do stablecoins present any significant problems for monetary policy? Consider this discussion in a recent Conversations With Tyler: DIXON: I think you’re going to have every bank probably issuing, I hope, a stablecoin the way you have them issuing credit cards. These all have users and customers. The banks will have a button that says, .. MORE
Central Planning
How Tariffs Built the World’s Worst Car that Only the Rich Could Have
As the White House aims to bring more manufacturing to the United States with its bludgeon of a disastrous tariff policy, most economists have focused on the short-term hits to American firms’ profitability. Harder to imagine is how a protectionist policy does such corrosive damage over the long term because we may never observe what .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Fewer Rules, Better People: Lam on Legalism’s Moral Cost
Lam’s book Fewer Rules, Better People: The Case for Discretion is filled with specific examples of cases where the absence of discretion compels people to take actions contrary to justice or even just common sense. In one chapter, he tells of a woman who, through her organization, was hosting a roundtable conversation at a conference. She wanted .. MORE
Price Controls
The Key Difference between Rent Control and Gasoline Price Controls
What was the difference between rent controls on apartments and price controls on gasoline? In the rent control case, current tenants are insiders. They don’t have to line up for an apartment. So, as noted above, most of them will favor rent control. In the gasoline price control case, though, everyone (unless they had .. MORE
Price Controls
More Fronts in the War on Prices
When we talk about opposition to prices, we’re usually talking about price controls. This isn’t unreasonable. There are still calls for them in response to short-term higher prices after a disaster, or longer-term cost-of-living increases, as for rent or food. It’s important to explain the negative unintended consequences of such interventions. But sometimes, people who .. MORE
Economic Education
The Importance of Theory: Trade, Jobs, and Wages
Theory is vital to understanding the world. It both helps us make sense of the world around us and make predictions. Theory is like a pair of glasses: a good pair helps you see better. A bad pair makes things worse. And no pair is just useless. One of the major problems these days is .. MORE
Regulation
Mind Your Own Damn Business!
Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz, of whom I am not a fan, had one very good line that he used a lot when running on the Democratic ticket last summer: “Mind your own damn business.” He didn’t really believe it. Someone who sets up a snitch line during the Covid lockdown doesn’t really believe that government .. MORE