EconLog Archive
Economics of Health Care
Response to a Friend about Fear of Death
My friend Ross Levatter sent me a thoughtful email challenging some aspects of my posts (here and here) on the risks we should fear. He gave me permission to post the whole thing. I also shared it with co-author Charley Hooper, who emailed me his thoughts. I’ll answer, and give Charley’s answer, after his letter. .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Open Borders: Pegg’s Essay Questions
IUPUI‘s Scott Pegg assigned Open Borders this semester, and kindly gave me permission to post the following essay questions on the book. Enjoy! Please answer one of the following four questions. Because this is an open book, open time assignment, I expect to see some detail and specificity in your answers. References to Caplan and Weinersmith’s .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
Death panels, euthanasia, and the conservative embrace of herd immunity
I don’t have an ax to grind here, but I’ve noticed an anomaly and wonder if commenters see the same issue. I’ve always thought of the left as being vaguely “pro-life” on issues like pollution control and national health care. The right seems “pro-life” in its opposition to Medicare “death panels”, euthanasia, and of course .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
Answer to a Reader on What We Should Fear
I received the following letter last week and the author gave me permission to quote without using his name. Hi Dr. Henderson, My name is X, I’m a fan of your writing, so I wanted to thank you for your work and insight that I’ve been able to enjoy… I recently read your article “What .. MORE
Macroeconomics
That doesn’t mean what you think it means
Over the past month, I’ve been trying to pin down exactly what’s wrong with Modern Monetary Theory. Or perhaps a less presumptuous way of putting it is that I’ve been trying to figure out what mainstream economists believe is wrong with MMT. Here I’ll list 6 MMT ideas. I’ll first explain the kernel of truth .. MORE
Economic Education
Simplifying the teaching of money
JP Koning has a proposal for simplifying the teaching of basic monetary economics. He starts with this Venn diagram: Which he explains as follows: Monetary economists such as Nick Rowe and George Selgin have proposed, and I concur, that we just chuck store of value from the definition of money. But we are still left .. MORE
Entrepreneurship
Matt Zwolinski defends Herbert Spencer
Matt Zwolinski, a philosophy professor at University of San Diego and a “bleeding heart” libertarian, is engaged in a gallant but—I am afraid—hopeless conversation on Twitter with “Existential Comics.” The latest of such comics deals with Herbert Spencer‘s visit to the U.S. and builds on Spencer’s well-known disappointment in meeting the culture of rampant free .. MORE
Labor Market
Yglesias’s Reasonably Strong Case for Way More Immigration
As a long-time advocate of expanded immigration, I am delighted to have left/liberal Matthew Yglesias as an ally. Yglesias, who helped found online magazine Vox, is one of the rising stars in journalism and, especially, economic journalism. His latest book, One Billion Americans, advocates what the title says: we should change institutions so that we .. MORE
Labor Market
Does Letting People Work Constitute Assault on Workers?
Dr. Sunetra Gupta and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, two of the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, write: The Canadian COVID-19 lockdown strategy is the worst assault on the working class in many decades. Low-risk college students and young professionals are protected; such as lawyers, government employees, journalists, and scientists who can work from home; .. MORE
Behavioral Economics
Spencer and Prejudice
Herbert Spencer’s “From Freedom to Bondage” famously claims that “[T]he more things improve the louder become the exclamations about their badness.” And he offered a bunch of great examples. Inspired by Spencer’s insight, I recently turned to Google Ngram to look at long-run trends for six oft-named expressions of prejudice. Notice: .. MORE
Macroeconomics
Krugman on the effect of increased money growth
Tim Peach directed me to a graph in Paul Krugman’s International Economics textbook (coauthored with Maurice Obstfeld and Marc J. Melitz.) It’s a very elegant display of the long run effect of an acceleration in the money supply growth rate (and roughly describes the US economy from 1963-73): Here’s how to read these graphs. Graph .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Similarity Between Socialism and Fascism: An Illustration
Fortunately, socialism and fascism are not the only two political alternatives, for neither is attractive. Moreover, a well-kept secret is how similar the two ideologies are. Substituting socialism for fascism in many statements from fascists would bring instant approval from socialists. Many antifa agitators would be surprised to realize that they are doing fascism unknowingly, .. MORE
Economics of Health Care
We Could Have Had the Vaccine in Early Spring at the Latest
You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public in an act of scientific and humanitarian .. MORE
Cost-benefit Analysis
What Should We Fear Most and What Should We Do About It?
Some acquaintances recently paddled surfboards and kayaks into the Pacific to disperse a relative’s ashes where he loved to surf. During the memorial service, one brother of the deceased expressed concern about the risk from sharks. The image of an aggressive shark in the deep ocean is graphic and terrifying, but the risk of mundane .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Pope Francis ♥ Mariana Mazzucato
Pope Francis is an amazingly productive author. On October 3 he released a new encyclical letter (All Brothers), now he published a new book, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future. We learn from UCL that the Pope commends in the book Mariana Mazzucato’s work and that in the book: The Pope … .. MORE
Politics and Economics
When regulators engage in “white lies”
Regulators are supposed to protect us from making foolish decisions. When doing so, they often believe the public interest is served by promoting “white lies’, that is, false statements that are intended to be for our own good. If fact, the short run benefits of white lies are almost always outweighed by their much bigger .. MORE
Labor Market
A 1972 Memory of Walter Williams
Who are those guys? In December 1972, I was in southern Ontario for Christmas after a fairly successful first quarter in the Ph.D. program at UCLA. I had Christmas with my friend and fellow Canadian UCLAer, Harry Watson, at his mom’s (“mum’s” to Canadians) place in Brantford. We knew that the 1972 American Economic Association .. MORE
Central Planning
Vaccines’ Last Hurdle: Central Planners
Urgently needed drugs developed under Operation Warp Speed are at the mercy of officials working at “bureaucrat speed.” I rarely like the titles that editors choose for my op/eds and articles. But this title that my Hoover editor chose is way better than mine. Here are the first three paragraphs of “Vaccines’ Last Hurdle: .. MORE
Liberty
Freedom, the Harm Principle, and the COVID Vaccine
2020 has gone from being an all bad news year, to what I guess can be described as a good news/bad news kind of year. The good news? We have several very promising vaccines that should be available fairly soon – in fact in record time. The bad news is that public distrust about the .. MORE
Finance
George Soros and the Difficulties of Macro-investing
I receive this from my friend Antonio Foglia. It seemed brilliant and worth sharing (with his permission). Last night I saw the documentary on George Soros directed by Bob Dylan’s son. To explain how Macro investing works, George explains in an old interview that he was once skiing in St. Moritz and had picked up .. MORE
Fiscal Policy
Relief, not stimulus
In a rare bit of good news out of DC, it seems as though the “stimulus” part of the new fiscal package may be dropped: Direct cash payments to most American households were one of the most popular and efficient measures Congress enacted as part of its response to the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year, .. MORE